"after The Man In The Cafe Who Said The Jewish People..." by Alain Ginsberg by Nostrovia! Press

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"after The Man In The Cafe Who Said The Jewish People Really Found Out A Lot of Ways To Fuck Up A Fish" by Alain Ginsberg

And on the eighth day after an infant is born
with a penis, the ceremony of brit milah is performed
and for me my bottom surgery began.
If there is one thing I will accomplish,
it is that I started transitioning since birth and
have had the longest surgery recorded.
A man in the cafe mentions a love
for gefilte fish, describes the ways
the Jewish people have made creation
out of a world they were given,
and I understand the metaphor now.
Understand when men on the TV talk
about the smell of vagina, it is most often
done while I am drowning, breathing water,
something smells fishy.
And on the eighth day when there is no longer a dominant female
the clownfish's most dominant male will transition
and that too is how I express judaism.
My father yelling from the top of the stairs,
and me, in the basement, waist deep in creek water
swimming, looking for the next step in the torah
to split my core and flip the skin in half
to bloom in my waist, and this is one way
I have learned what schmuck means.
I am born and on the eighth day I start researching
vaginoplasty, watch videos where
there are no parts wasted, how it looks
as if a flower is blooming and the blooming flower
is cause for celebration, and my body is deposited
into the bay full of formaldehyde.
There are multiple species of fish that change gender
and it is not uncommon to think that one could be born
with a single Jewish parent.
My body swims into the world and on the eighth day
it enters the market, and my mother passes me to
the childless, to my father, and the fish monger
prepares me for a meal as seaweed grows
against my thighs
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originally published at L'Éphémère Review