Julian/Sara Mithra

Issue No. 22 • Spring 2021

Altered Orchard

how to do it  —  so it will be done  —  before and after  —  originary and grafted

You must with a fine, thin, strong and sharpe Saw, make the wound gape a
straw-breadth wide, into which you must put your Grafts.

You must with a kind, stout, sure, and beveled Mind, arm yourself against the
urge to mistake the root for the swelling, the origin for disrobing. Carry a
mirror to the orchard between your thighs and draw it near without flinching
(for some will be not-ty), and surely stay your foot and leg, or otherwise stand
crooked, and behold the wound. Remember, a /waʊnd/ can be a spindle, a
spool, taking up thread into a tight spiral, into which you must place your 
Gift.

The graft is a top twig taken from some other specimen. 

The Gift is a sharp twinge taken from some other sex beneath the knot of hair.
In one future, a thin knife an inch downward would thrust, but not throttle. Let
your Gift grow eyes in readiness for other sights, and issue the effluvium. So
often, the sex receives a rebuke via photograph and cannot work on presence,
and some receive not sex so readily as the natal 
genders.

The best time of grafting is next Spring, before you see any great
appearance of leafe, and fore they be proud, though it be sooner. 

The best time to transition is long ago, or now, for that saves a second
wound; if your desire be of sufficient strength and your pocket of sufficient
largesse, then you shall be rewarded with an organ instead of repulsiveness.
When the son begins to stir in his rank bed which smells of sweat and nacre
and latex, or when the daughter waxes in her sheath, is best to redress the
infringement. You may only knot and bud, incipient bumps, swoles, welts
and engorgements, and fore you be proud, you must be 
faithful.

Threshold

If you dress like a girl men treat you like a girl                     

When men treat you like a girl
If you act like a girl
When men think you’re a girl
If someone smiles at you
When men treat you like a girl
If you aren’t a girl but look like a
girl
Girls ought to be
If you aren’t a girl but act like a girl
If a man thinks you’re a girl
When he holds the door for you
When you hesitate

you act like a girl
men think you’re a girl
they smile at you
it’s because you’re a girl
they don’t talk to you
don’t talk
looked at and not heard
you seem like a girl
he holds the door open for you
you have to go in
he says After you, I insist

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Julian née Sara Mithra hovers between genders and genres, border-mongering and -mongreling. If the Color Is Fugitive (Nomadic Press, 2018) stages an escape from frontier taxonomies and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Their chapbook of trans* anagrams, Kaleidoscope, is forthcoming on Ethel Press. Their imaginary archive, Unearthingly, is forthcoming on Kernpunkt Press.