I want to thank the maestro Tim Gunn, Heidi Klum, also every episode of Project Runway and Runway All-Stars, Every gay and lesbian contestant that ever sewed, stitched sequins to dresses or pantaloons every queer who ever threw a tantrum, walked out and came back to win. Thank you to the Jersey and Atlanta Housewives and spin-offs To all their queer queen besties I want to thank RuPaul and every queen on every episode of Drag Race Also, that dollar store cashier I ran into with my mother in small-town Massachusetts who actually thought I was RuPaul and kept calling me, "Miss Honey." Thank you, Oprah, her close friend designer Nate Berkus. I extend condolences to the lover he lost when the tsunami hit Sri Lanka. I also want to thank Walmart and the trans person who worked behind the register when my mother worked there as a greeter. When eventually she was fired for wearing women's clothes, to my shock, my mother said, "That's unjust and I think it's discrimination." I want to thank that person wherever they are. l want to thank that mixed-race lesbian Josie on Top Chef I want to thank every LGBTQIA person on every show that my mother watched religiously, because each and every one of them in one way or another prepared my mother at eighty-four years old for the queer art catalogue I was a part of that I brought home to show her called Cast of Characters. Holding my breath, I handed it to her, asked her to guess of all the images which was mine. She saw the word queer first, "Why do you call yourselves that? That's like saying you're Niggers." I tried to explain the concept of reclaiming language used against us. My mother refused to listen. She thumbed through the images, eyes wide with wonder. She knows I don't usually show her stuff for many reasons. She gave her opinion on each image. "Ooooh this one with flowers," she pointed. "I like this." The next was an image of a man with cock and balls out, "I don't like this one," she said. She persisted onto the next image. "Pregnant butch," she said out loud and giggled. "A pregnant butch," she said again as if fascinated by the idea. "I don't see yours, oh but here it is!" She fastened on a blue and red watercolor of figures gathered in grief titled, 6 times. "It's the family of Stephon Clark," I explained. "That Black kid from Sacramento police shot in the back six to eight times, unarmed in his backyard. They said he was a burglar." "I wanted to paint the pictures of his family grieving because they had no voice and were made invisible." My mother got quiet, mouthed something like a ha Her eyes narrowed and full, like when I visit and we watch shows about slavery together/like in Roots when Chicken George has to leave his son at the crossroads to gain freedom. My mother wants to cry but doesn't. She commands me to show the catalogue to my father. Later she asks to take a picture because she wants to show my ninety-year-old aunt.
In New York this year we are celebrating, The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. My queer friends complain about all the festivities as "The monster that ate New York," But I say I'm excited by it all If only because I can go home to my family (Because of all of those queens and kings before me) Marked safe.
I wrote "Marked Safe" around the 50th Anniversary of The Stonewall Riots. As the poem states, I was grateful to be alive and to witness such a historic event for Queer LGBTQi people. I also wanted to acknowledge the sometimes positive roles that Queers in pop culture, in television, film and other media have, paving the way for those of us who have been invisible or misrepresented, and creating space and language for those who’ve experienced discrimination and/or violence.
“Emerging from the ferment of the Basement Workshop, a collective of Asian-American poets, artists, and activists in the 1970s, Berssenbrugge went on to create a visionary ecopoetics that directly confronts our planetary—and human—crisis. With her preternaturally long lines, Berssenbrugge composes a syntax of unfolding vistas, stretching our senses of both the plausible and the possible."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"This element of Kurdish delights me: to crack a word open and peer inside it, to find a world within a word, a world where the abstract is embodied. The Kurdish language calls the body into every conversation, fashioning idea from body. There is no hiding the body, not even to protect it."
