A Love Poem by America’s First Pregnant Trans Woman

by Theodora Divine II

“What the hell did you expect?” That’s what
he said, my father, who sat right there in my house
and called me a slut.

“Hey, whoa, hey, slow down there, gramps. Let’s
show some respect for your daughter there, sir. Just
show the bitch some respect!”

That there is my husband, Derby, talking. He knows
whereof he speaks. He better. He has himself
a brand-new Cadillac CVS sedan which he bought
on his winnings from last year’s darn Tupelo poker
championship, so don’t tell me, just don’t you dare
try telling me, you hear?

We met at the Magnolia Nights Formal Wear Annual Party
held at Ole Miss this year on April 8th, in the Bellevue
Towers dance hall over on Shake ‘n’ Bake Lane. Afterwards,
I won’t lie, he swept me off my feet and I’ve done been
off them ever since.

Mind you, he took right away to slapping my ass. I told him,
I told him right then and there that I would not have him
hitting me like that. I don’t like it. I don’t want no man
slapping my bare bottom unless he’s fixing to fuck me.
Then, it’s all right, when he good and stiff and in me real
nice. That’s what I’m saying. It’s always been that way.

My mamma tole me my daddy liked to haul off and slap her
real good, too, and she wouldn’t have any of that slapping crap,
so she grabbed her a skillet and whomped him over the head.
Just lay into that motherfucker, I mean it, and he learned
to cut that shit out. Wham! It just ‘bout tore a hole in his head.

But, see, that’s how folks are. That is what it is. A woman’s
got to stand up for herself or them men be on her twenty-four
hours a day, I kid you not. They be fucking you in the ass,
in the coochie cooch, shit, them guys be fucking your ears
if you gals don’ stand up for yourselves. That’s just the way it is.

You don’t need no Nobel in literature to know the ways of men.
That’s what my mamma used to say. She knew William Faulkner’s
cleaning ladies, ‘cause they went to the same beauty parlor outside
Oxford. They knew. They knew. That is all I’ll be saying on that subject.
But see, the thing of it is, pecans do grow on trees, see? Oh, yes, they do!
And so, that’s why a woman like me’s got to put out. Otherwise, she
gon’ be left behind. The guy’s ‘round here will just dump your ass.

That is exactly what Jed McFadden done to my mamma. He was fixin’
to stop the car, had his dick out and all. He was driving one of them big
ole’ Mercury 500s and she told him in no uncertain terms she wasn’t about
to hand over her virtue, no sir. And he said, gal, you ain’t leaving me
with no blue balls after I done spent thirteen dollars feeding your fucking
face with cat fish, so he up and done it. He put her out the car and drove
off. He said, “You gonna give me some or you gonna walk yourself home.”
How’s that?

Holy Rollers

Darling Faith runs a daycare center for children with a license for fifteen. Instead,
she has over forty little ones in her house, behind a partition within a secret room
in the cellar. It’s a criminal operation, with her modest home packed to the rafters.

Police call the place a puppy mill for toddlers. Isn’t that cute? She plans to give
her husband a blowjob for his birthday. Darling! Now isn’t that a Dickensian riot?
This haggard woman with curls in her face runs an operation for distressed housewives.

The women in the neighborhood are too busy to take care of their own. Oh, American
life. There are criminals everywhere. Protect yourself. Barricade yourself in. Hide.
Buy a shotgun and be ready to pull the trigger.

Darling is pulling in the dough. All told, with municipal subsidies, she’s getting over
fifteen-thou a month. Bravo. Her husband Pete is a pimp. He’s working with some
neighborhood thugs on a plan to turn the baby girls into sex toys for pedophiles.

He’s got the thing in the works. He bought some good photographic equipment.
He wants to turn the garage into a sound studio. Darling figures the toddlers are too
young, so she plans to expand to include little ones from five to nine.

They’ll be groomed and trained to pose. All told Darling and darling Pete look to make
fifty-grand a month. That should hold them. They just bought a Cadillac Escalade,
her hubby’s favorite vehicle. It cost over seventy thousand dollars.

They’re proud as punch. She loves it. She even posed for hubby exiting the car without
panties. Those pics are called money shots, the distributor laps them up. They sell
for thousands each. She’s a star. Don’t tell her she was wrong to shave down there.

She’s taken to music. She can’t decide which is her favorite: “Singin’ in the Rain,” or “We’re
in the Money.” They’re in the home stretch. She and Pete are close to fulfilling their dreams.
They’ve got more money than they know what to do with. Why attack this woman?

She’s taken to throwing it around. This morning at church she took out a twenty, folded
into the shape of a little hat, and tossed it into the collection plate as it passed. She cried
out as she did so: there. She knows now what it feels like to be part of the elect.

On a Sunday

The man killed himself on Sunday.
On a Sunday!
Why not wait?
Why couldn’t he wait until Monday,
for a time when suicide is more appropriate?
For a time when many others
feel like ending their lives.

Sunday! The day of colored eggs
and little girls in patent leather
is no time to do oneself in. Sundays
are a day for French toast and chicken dinners.
It’s the day families gather for biscuits
and gravy, and second helpings.
It’s the only day Uncle Billy sleeps in.
It’s a day for singing.

If you are going to kill yourself,
why not do it on Saturday afternoon?
The day teenage girls wait to be
taken out by handsome boys.
There is a weekend ritual: screwing
in the backseat of daddy’s Chevy,
hanging out, drinking strawberry shakes,
and, if one is lucky, tasting nookie.

Suicide may have the ring of truth,
but it’s nothing more than an act
of vulgar desperation. It belongs
to a night of vomit, not to the morning
after. It has nothing to do with choir.
It has nothing to say to joy. Sundays are
the negation of self-doubt; Sunday
is a day for delightful worship.

Where did he do it? And how? I’m only curious.
Did he run into a brick wall? On a Sunday
there’s nothing on TV; now that’s a good reason
to blow one’s brains out. Or maybe the griddle
cakes burned. The maid was late and forgot
to make orange juice. The matinee was sold out.
He got to the carving station and found the prime
rib was bloody.
There’s a pimple on his sweet ass.
His bank account was frozen.
The car won’t start. When you
are suicidal, any reason will do, trust
me. I’ve killed myself many times over.
I killed myself just yesterday,
because my shoelace broke.
Don’t tell me he had no reason.

He couldn’t decide, that’s why. He killed
himself out of spite. He’d made a pact.
He promised to be home for supper. He agreed
to end it all when he heard women can’t vote
in Argentina. He read last night in the New York Times
that people eat baby goats in Transylvania.
He couldn’t accept the fact that Japanese people
sleep in their pajamas.

The world is nothing but injustice. His favorite
show was cancelled when its star got pregnant.
His neighbor’s dachshund, Speedy, was hit by a car.
He chose Sunday morning to get back at his mother.
She overcooks his eggs, which he prefers sunny side up.
She serves them on the floor with too much ketchup.
She told him there was no more coffee;
he’d have to drink tea. He hated his father, too.

Sunday is as good a day as any.
This is how atheists think.
They break into churches and
shit on the pews. They are heartless.
My best friend Carrie was attacked
for holding hands with a white girl.
And you wonder why he killed himself on a Sunday?
I’m surprised he didn’t kill himself every day of the week.

Sadder

Honky, cracker, whitey;
It’s BLM instead.
We matter more than you.
White lives done mattered for long enough.
Can’t we just get along?
Fuck that. I am a man.

We done been there, done that.
Don’t talk ‘bout no wrongful death suit,
Take the case to the Supreme Court.
We talkin’ about tire necklaces, South Africa style.
Takin’ it to the street, ain’t gonna be no court of law, man.
We leavin’ Camden a burned-out cavity of human misery.
When we through, we heading for Malibu.

Gotta show whitey things are dire.
Pigs in a blanket, one, two, three;
All we want is our liberty.
Get me my Escalade, that my mule,
A Caddy clad in gold with leather upholstery
And a bar, plus a moon roof so’s I can see the star.

Open up the prison door and let my niggas out.
Holy mother fucker—uh huhn—that my bro Timmy
up in there and we fixin’ to take you fuckers out,
If you don’t get us them keys. We about to swarm
out of there like a bunch of African killer bees.

We ain’t takin’ nothin’ back;
Ain’t gonna be no apology.
Now we talkin’ insurrection, baby, a bloodbath.
We fixin’ to kill you crackers left and right—
any yous motherfuckers try to stand in our way.

Fuck black lives sadder. That just makes us madder.
You fools think we jokin’. We ain’t playin’.
We goin’ give you women a pokin’.
Line ‘em up, get out the way. No point
lookin’ bug-eyed like a bunch of bitches.

We takin’ what we want by force. Think of it as divorce.
This here now my property. My forty acre start right here,
This here condominium, mine, bro. Get the fuck out.
We want yo ladies, too, on their knees, While they suckin’,
you can start apologizing, just like President Biden.

We takin’ you down, set it all on fire.
You keep askin’, “black lives matter, too?
Or you saying only bros matter? We demand clarification.”
Listen suckers: we’re for us and you all is for you.
We fixin’ to settle it in the street; see what damage we do.
Fuck the red, white, and blue. We through.