Transitory

by Subhaga Crystal Bacon

Grounded in protest and solidarity, Subhaga Crystal Bacon’s Isabella Gardner Award-winning Transitory is a collection of elegies memorializing 46 transgender and gender-nonconforming people murdered in the US and Puerto Rico in 2020.   Epistolary in nature, these commemorative poems are “gleaned sketches” attempting to reconstruct lives and deaths from the typically scarce information made available on the internet. Interspersed with the elegies are personal explorations of gender identities and sexualities from a Queer elder who has lived through the post-Stonewall years of sexual liberation, the second wave of feminism, and the recent rapid increases in awareness about gender and sexualities met almost equally with anti-trans and anti-Queer violence.  Seen through the lenses of whiteness and privilege from the last quarter of a lifetime, these poems navigate the desire to be at home in our bodies, to be loved and desired without danger, and most of all to live free, healthy, and welcome in the world we inhabit.

Genres: Poetry, True Crime

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2023

Reviews

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems chronicling the trans people murdered in 2020.

from Cautiously Watching for Violence: "A psychic once said that I have the unique aura / of those who in their lifetimes migrate from male / to female. I knew this to be true, having known / myself a boy and then riding that knowing into puberty, / confused in skirts and fishnets and desert boots. / Crushes on girls. / With cheekbones like knives. / Who pushed int my lavatory stall. / Who let me wear her leather jacket. / Who was pregnant and married at 17. / Whose hair I stroked by flashlight. / Who embarrassed my dreams with longing."

from Selena Reyes-Hernandez, 37, Chicago, IL, May 31: "Selena, everything about this is wrong, murdered for being trans / by an 18-year-old—it's hard to say man—high school student / who lived two blocks away from you and owned the Luger / he killed you with after coming home with you for sex."

from Aja Raquelle Rhone-Spears, 34, Portland, OR, July 28: "Rocky, if I may call you that, your sense of fashion / is apparent in every photo. It's clear that you were vigilant / about your looks: clothes, makeup, hair, nothing to murder / you for. A month has passed, and still the Portland police / hold no one accountable. There's no more protest / for you, despite being killed by an anonymous brutality."

[Tova · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I'm here, not just counting, but incanting."

This is a powerful but deeply painful collection of poems remembering, mourning, and uplifting the lives of all of the trans and gender-nonconforming lights extinguished in 2020 in the United States. The author, Subhaga Crystal Bacon, is a local poet and family friend, and I had the honour of hosting an event for this book a few years back at my local bookstore job. Subhaga is such a talented poet, and this collection is poignant as it is hard to read. It's important to remember these voices more than ever in our current political climate. We honour them as they wished to be known, and hope that the increasing trend of loss of life doesn't continue to climb. I am glad this collection exists, and may it continue to uplift the lives of all within its contents, and all those who have since been taken to be remembered with equal solemnity, attention, love and respect.

"My trans brothers and sisters, no one should have to die for this."

[Carla Panciera · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a heartwrenching and powerful book dedicated to "All the Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Lights Extinguished in 2020." One year, and yet the book is filled with names of those taken so young and so violently. In the poem dedicated to Sara Blackwood, 29 years old, who was killed in Indianapolis, the poet asks:

Friend, have you walked the streets of your city
under its familiar night sky, safe in your skin,
your body moving inside clothes you wore
all day, late, work ended. Safe in the familiar landscape?

I have, but so many people are not afforded that simple freedom. I highly recommend this book and its elegies. Here's to a world filled with much more love in their honor.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bacon's poetry collection honors the trans persons killed in 2020 with these elegies, many of which record the chosen gendering of the individuals whose lives were taken while their families may not have in their obituaries. It's a heart wrenching catalogue. The use of poetic forms such gazal and villanelle intensifies a feeling of incantation.

[Sara Moore Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a gorgeous book of witness and documentary poetics. Subhanga’s crafted and expert poems taught me names I didn’t know, making me open my eyes to the truth and danger of trans lives. Read this book, teach this book, know these names!

[January O'Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful read.

[Kelly Cressio-Moeller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful, moving, heartbreaking, utterly deft

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerful, necessary collection. Beautifully honors the lives lost to violence against transgender individuals. Very moving.

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful and heartbreaking, these poems make us look.