Changing the Subject

By Joy Ell

All text taken from the July 2005 issue of Redbook




Still feel weird, Mr. Not-Quite-Right?
Dying to join the bake sale brigade?
Stay put, skin. Cure that infection

by getting man right:
thinning hair, rounded pivoting head,
a standard safety feature that maintains

the visible signs of belonging
by drizzling lemon juice on top of everything,
masking the ultrafeminine silhouette

creating chemical imbalances
in your story on felicity.
For extra staying power,

put family first. Be happy
holding a sick baby in the middle of the night
who wants the best for you.

This routine keeps couples close.
Your head should clear up too,
prolonging your life

as an ideal shade
by scooping out the insides.
Does that mean you can

stay connected?
Experience another level of love?
Simply change the subject?

Let's face it:
you are upside down in the water, fighting your future
to keep the present alive.

Take your shadow and mix it up.
The future is in your natural fibers,
jumpstarting your libido,

easy to read at a glance.
See how confident you can look
underneath it all:

something different, virtually impossible,
a flirty focal point with hints of shimmer,
with skin you love,

not just features that protect you.
Now that's a reason to celebrate
the first lady of nails

coming out of the woodwork,
causing your headache,
squeezing body and personality

so there's little difference
between feeling unhappy
and physically being there.

She tells the truth.
For some, it's a burning in the throat. For you,
the simple task

of swallowing your family.
What you really need
to make this marriage work

is to practice being transparent.
Release the secret
that's twisting your soul into a figure eight,

making your skin more sensitive,
softer than before, susceptible
to the ample female form, the goddess,

floating in the mirror. The sooner you're truthful
the better. People may not choose
to stretch the limits of their lives

but they do braid on a regular basis,
break inside and out
while staying connected, blend familiar faces

with new clothes, new roles, new silhouettes,
blood flowing
from their most secret questions

to heal the basic mesh of marriage.
This is not about wishing, spoiling, fading, craving,
restructuring your life

at a slightly different angle,
using your imagination, growing from within.
The nice-girl voice

with dragon-lady nails
is screaming inside and out,
slowly shedding pain as it goes, unleashing

valuable dreams you could not share,
warm, tingling sensations
brushed with olive oil,

the belonging you desire, clean and simple:
love, a crusty loaf of bread,
going barefoot again.



Joy Ell is the pseudonym of a transitioning male-to-female transsexual. A widely published poet as a male with two books to her credit, she is re-emerging without credentials or biography. "Changing the Subject" is drawn from "Transit of Venus," a sequence of poems composed completely from text drawn from women's magazines, that chart the breakdown of male identity and the relationships built around it and the emergence of a new female identity. This is the second poem in the sequence.