and if some came to say trans rights
and others came out since they thought
it’d be a big old party,
celebration of fuck the police,
a moment when the rules
might be suspended,
that’s all good. I mean,
the contradictions
of mass gatherings
interest me, it’s not
that I’m incurious,
but that I find those motives
are all one.
when the police locked comrades
in the library and lied
about it, our chant said
trans rights are human rights,
but what we meant was
rights won’t save us
if we don’t protect each other.
a comrade said
the read-in of trans authors was
the happiest she’d ever been
at any protest except
possibly a kiss-in once.
the revolution will need savvy
party planners, capable
of seeing
how the carnival’s already here.
a radiant incipience.
just waiting to be generalized.
“radiant incipience” was written shortly after the #TakeBackTPL protest against transphobia in 2019. This poem is an excerpt from Plenitude © 2022 by Daniel Sarah Karasik. Used with permission of Book*hug Press.
