Feminization: A prologue

Jeffrey Alfier

Listen: not everything broken remains defeated.
Our bodies move ahead of us.

Hormone — from the Greek, meaning to set in motion:
transdermal estrogen seeping into skin

like a fever, like a mouth, a script swarming
the blood till you’re no mere language rewritten,

no easy surrogate for the body’s past — nor simply errant flesh
in a slow dismantling. You are no peripheral woman.

This is quite strong and how long will you take it
the pharmacist asks, more sorrow in her brow than puzzlement.

In India, transwomen reveal their reborn flesh to the sea
and the sea returns a gaze never given them before,

its saline breath damp, embryonic,
and falling all around them.

Jeffrey Alfier’s most recent book, The Shadow Field, was published by Louisiana Literature Journal & Press (2020). Journal credits include The Carolina Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Hotel Amerika, James Dickey Review, New York Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, and Vassar Review. He is founder and co-editor of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review.