1 poem
by Alexis Aceves Garcia
Alexis Aceves Garcia is a writer, researcher, and visual artist living in San Diego, CA. They are currently working on a hybrid poetry manuscript about queering the family archive, trans temporality, and desire.
This poem was awarded the 2020 Peach Bronze in Poetry by guest judge ALOK.
"sometimes the most devastating poems are the most beautiful poems. it’s not so much that the pain, it is beautiful, but rather that there is beauty in finally being able to name the pain... poetry finally being that space where we can name inconvenient truths, dismember all the noise that goes into pretending to be able. ODE OT TRANS BOXING CLASS is so beautiful it hurts. it hurts because of what it says (and what it does not say): how when you live in a body already marked for violence, where there is no outside of it, sometimes relief comes from being able to choose your own poison. the poem asks us: 'in a world that dispossess us of so much, can we not at least maintain choice?' this is why i chose this poem: because it makes me uncomfortable, because its honesty burns like a ginger shot, because it captures so effortlessly how desperate we are (and perhaps how dexterous we become) in finding a way—any way—to make it work. to make us work."
—ALOK
ODE TO TRANS BOXING CLASS
when Liv wraps my hands
on a platform in the middle
of an almost barren Bushwick gym
i am the most dangerous i
have ever been
haven’t thrown a punch but
my whole body weaponed
in black wraps n gold
gloves, surrounded by bodies
who have never been inside
a boxing ring but know
the dance, a choreography
of defense against death
our feet in holy holy rhythm
here, we are all alive
n kiss each other’s
mouths: my glove, yr lip,
yr glove, my lip,
n when Nola reaches
their fist to my ear i want to hold it
there w/ my cheek
n when they wink after
swinging a slow miss
i have never wanted to be
punched in the nose more
please, jab jab cross me
in the glasses
take a padded fist to my ribs
i am a beating thing
wanting to be beaten
only here am i safe to want
a fight to choose who ends
me