First Prize winner of the FuPo Poetry Contest (2021)
~
I’m Genderfluid Because I Wanted To Be an Immortal Jellyfish but Nature Said It Wasn’t Allowed
Like a universe,
this sequence begins
with a globule:
blob collapses on the
sea floor, becomes a hundred
versions of itself.
Medusae rise, bell jars for heads,
transcending the need for brains,
or hearts, or definite lifespans.
When rent, they regress,
any ache can make them
young again.
And again and again in
a returning refrain of presex that
threatens to drown me in envy.
Transdifferentiating,
cysts shimmer into cityscapes
from which simulacra
spring up,
cells ceaseless even when
the individual is not.
Age has no sting when
immaturity ensures athanasy and
your body knows so few laws.
Immortal jellyfish are missable
and fingernail-small, seldom caught
except in our jealous melodies.
They are too changeable
to be dangerous, too variable
to be in much peril.
Wavering through adolescence,
hitchhiking widely, some of them do die
by coincidence or petri dish, but
the other tentacular tintinnabula
go on, looping toward endings
we may never note.
~
Jade Wallace’s poetry and fiction have appeared in This Magazine, Hermine, Canadian Literature, and elsewhere. Their debut book of poetry, Love Is A Place But You Cannot Live There, is forthcoming from Guernica Editions in 2023. They are currently the reviews editor for CAROUSEL, and co-founder of the collaborative writing entity MA|DE, whose most recent chapbooks are A Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books 2020) and A Barely Concealed Design (Puddles of Sky Press, 2020). Stay in touch: jadewallace.ca.