Teddy L. Friedline: Gender

REPRODUCTION.

My body has always been a smaller version of my mother’s. From the time I was a baby, my mother and I had the same face—I have my father’s mouth and chin, but he covers these with a mustache and goatee on his own face, obscuring our connections. As I grew older I grew more to resemble my mother—my hair grew in thick dark curls, my cheeks rounded and softened, my mouth nestled between parentheses. I learn to find pictures of my mother from her college days and watch my friends’ faces unfold into shock at our similarity. I accept my mother’s old clothes from when she was my age, tuck oversized button-downs into the back of my jeans, let leather Keds dig into my heels. Through divorce and displacement our bodies have changed shape, but mine remains a false duplicate of my mother’s that she created herself: compressed, pinched, worked like clay with water—before I was born she squeezed me between two clasped hands, fingers folded over fingers, pushing my matter into the center of her palms.

Gender Of The Poet, As Evaluated Through First & Second Derivative Tests

I. f(x) = gender, as I currently experience it

changes by the day discontent I do not call myself genderfluid

lest my scratching brain latch onto it and use it as a spiral

to throw me into what genders can I diagnose myself with

agender or neutrois? what is the difference between

the presence of neutrality and the absence of a presence? nonbinary

or genderqueer? blue-purple or green-orange? I need a list

fully calculated of every gender I will experience I need to be ready

like how the eggs in my ovaries count themselves off each time

my uterus sheds its cicada-skin lining but no let’s stop

remember what I have learned gender is an experience comfort

with a label is more important than its accuracy threatening to run away

won’t make your parents call you the right name I have found

an identity I can sit with I have found a name

I can feel with I have found pronouns that don’t feel wrong

I can rest now

II. f’(x) = gender, as I have expressed it

Critical values:

x = cicada

x = fabrication

x = parent

III. Maximum: cicada

I have constructed a version of myself for motherhood sometimes

she is a cicada she begets begets she is a mythology

of veiny thin wings and of children who all look different who all look exactly

like her propagation mourner the connection between Mother Bug

and myself is our shared cradle-womb the place I am a woman ends at

the place I can construct within me I cannot force myself to hate

IV. Minimum: fabrication

Some days I compress myself arrange flesh beneath nylon

pulled tight I hide behind loose jeanfronts at thirteen I made a penis for myself

from balled-up socks washed shame off them in the laundry I trap

curls beneath a baseball cap that’s a penis if I want it to be

I can pee standing up if I curl the brim stop the cicada-skin falling

if I fold the hat part and tuck it within me my manhood

is a construction canvas and thread held in my pants

I anticipate the moment it will fall out of my Jockeys

V. Neither: parent

when I tell my father I understand how hard this is for him I’m lying

he hides the way we look alike behind facial hair I think that must be what

he means when he says he doesn’t see any guy in me he’s been buying

me clothes from the men’s sections for years he thought it would make

me love him more he bought me almost anything those years

I spent my time climbing in and out of the gender pool wading in

before scraping my stomach trying to climb out maybe I have done

such an effective job concealing my own ungender around him washing

the pride makeup off on the metro home leaving trans emotions at the door

not because he won’t approve he won’t see them right

the way they turn in the light is different his sit in his lap

next to the tub of pimento cheese

VI. f”(x) = gender, as I have moved through it

Critical values:

x = in relation

x = Robin Hood (1973)

VII. Point of inflection [concave up to concave down]: in relation

really we never talked about this the place we met was pronouns

if they preferred a label, they used genderqueer I call myself nonbinary

tank tops masturbation trans bodies corsets binders

we never talked about how did they see themselves in relation to me how

is it different from how I saw myself in relation to them and I don’t mean

me on top of them their hair pulled back my Fisher-Price: My First

Lingerie the relation of above to below within to without my presence

to their transposed presence I mean how did we see each other?

did it differ from how we see ourselves? when they hold theirs up to the window

what pattern does it make on the floor? do

I touch it when I hold up mine? still?

VIII. Point of inflection [concave down to concave up]: Robin Hood (1973)

I hate to admit it my father’s question got me thinking I have scoured

my childhood I cannot find a piece of evidence to show him

say I always loved boy’s toys I was dysphoric and I didn’t have a name for it

I didn’t know I was different for that I knew I was different because kids

called me a devil worshipper not gay not a tranny I have this though

a fascination with soft-drawn foxes the sound of Phil Harris’s

voice the roll of the r’s KING Rrrrichard? not wanting to be

Maid Marian but Robin his teasaucer eyes

ooh de lally, ooh de lally, golly, what a day!

Teddy L. Friedline is a Maryland-based queer writer. They previously served as assistant poetry editor for Crashtest (crashtestmag.com). They are the recipient of various regional awards from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. If you're reading this, they're probably thinking about cicadas. They currently attend Washington College. You can find them on Instagram and on Twitter, both @jadeitebtrdish.