A Poem by Dana Vivian White

Author: Poetry Editor

October 25, 2017

This week, a poem by Dana Vivian White.

 

Transit

 

Everyone can’t go. You know well
how much space and air and more
these folks take up / There you are,
making so much room and none is left for you.

I watch you try to shrink to fit, try to /
I watch as you attempt to make yourself small, leaving the new and complicated pieces of self behind as requested / Just for now, of course  – to be picked up from this platform at some uncertain date and time but certainly at their convenience  – because right now it’s so damn extra.

Stand clear of the closing doors /
Come on, man. You better get in where you fit in, but ladies first and stand while they sit and your pronouns leave no room for the accoutrements of the self proclaimed real women and manspreading masculine men’s men on this journey.

Not everyone can go, lest you risk not arriving whole /
This is transit, this transition / a long fight of a fucking figure-it-out ride at sometimes high speeds and other times delayed by single-tracking due to perpetual track work in a dark tunnel between Deadname Place and Chosen Family Circle / where trust me there are folks waiting to board, happy to go and arrive with you in your entirety /
All may not board here, no. Everyone cannot go / Maybe you only.

——

DANA VIVIAN WHITE is an Afro-Latinx writer residing in the District of Columbia. Their work has appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Vetch.