Ariel Basom
What if water is so sky
What if water is so sky
even if a fish could fly
I would wonder what am I?
What is fluid is so airy
I should have a thought to marry
what so in me is so varied.
If I feel what grows inside me
if it is enough to be me
is she me as much as he?
Mirrors make me out a spy
when she is dormant where he lies
and he’s the one who owns the I.
Though demurely she has uttered
while he spat and while he stuttered
she is me and won’t be shuttered.
Sequins flash and patterns rage
inequity keeps her at bay
and she must not be on parade.
The woman on the march must stand
for she is just as much as man
in me but also in our land.
The feminist in me is strong
and she sings a protest song
of being second class so long.
I am one thing this I know
I’m a human person though
my gender is not status quo.
A public bathroom’s either or
so I choose the open door
not sure what I’m standing for.
I wash my hands like everyone
and in the mirror when I’m done
I see I am my mother’s son.
Adam’s apple does not sway
nor will it ever come away
I’m pretty in a masculine way.
Even when it’s Eve who wishes
for a chance to share the riches
on the surface of what this is.
Why must she be left unknown
and how does he remain dethroned
and how’s his gender his alone?
I am what I’m born to be
and it’s left to me to seize
whether I am he or she.
Inches from a familiar place
it’s what I want to be my face
but what if I am lacking grace?
The edges of my nose are marred
my narrow eyes are cold and scarred
my body kept so tense and hard.
Yet rising up to find the level
though distorted and disheveled
is the rest of me unsettled.
She is pounding in my veins
she is thrashing at the reins
she will burst out from her chains.
I give my hair a middle part
to see if that will be a start
but in the glass she is a lark.
I cannot see just what I am
unless I squint unless I scan
deeper than what is on hand.
It isn’t much to chop a tree
or recognize what’s also me
the fem of masculinity.
What is different is so plain
that even if the queer remains
I’d still wish to go unchanged.
What is double so is one
and I can feel that I am done
with questions of which I have none.
I am all and also neither
I am both and/or either
I am he and I am she/her.
What’s the audit? What’s the plan?
I can still remain a man
and also feel that I am and.
There’s a leopard in my soul
she watches what my muscles hold
released and easy she is bold.
I proclaim that I am free
to be the person who I be
filled with mascufemity.
And so I dress to bring her out
and walk so that her hips can shout,
”This is what we’re talkin about”
I can file down my nails
or I can hide behind my veil
but I am weak and I am frail.
So like any other man
whose strength belies the master’s plan
to keep the patriarchs on hand.
Fortitude’s a female trait
let’s get that much so it’s straight
it’s women’s strength I venerate.
So when I say she must be strong
it’s her I’m hoping can belong
inside what feels has been so wrong.
When I was just a little boy
and played with all my brother’s toys
she began to be destroyed.
Not that crashing matchbox cars
and playing G.I. Joe discards
the gender roles I have disbarred.
Boys and girls are blue and pink
but I am colorblind and think
that categories like these stink.
What if everything I do
takes on what is also true
and I am of a different hue?
I am of a different shade
I am of a different grade
I am not what once was made.
What if yellow is so green
even if I’m in between
I can king as well as queen?
It’s not as complex as is chess
if it comes down to how I dress
and what is more is also less.
So I move across the board
a pawn in search of some reward
to be a lady and a lord.
The whole thing is a royal pain
a social error that remains
in shadows dark and unexplained
We operate in binary code
where ones and zeroes are the mode
by which we count the genders known
I would wonder who I am
even if the seagulls swam
deep beneath where birds are banned.
In the ocean’s unlit depths
where Neptune stores the extra wet
a little mermaid sang and wept.
But when she saw a seagull swim
she declared that she was him
and the impossible was thusly trimmed.
”I don’t have to be depressed
I can breathe the air no less
and I don’t have to be a mess.”
Then she found her voice again
and her legs felt grounded when
she walked and sang about it then.
“I can be just what I seem
and I can swim and I can dream
and I can be the in-between.
What is one is only one
I can swim and I can run
I can be the lunar sun.”
What is water is so sky
and when I see a fish can fly
I can honor so am I.
Ariel Basom (he/him) writes poems with a focus on difference—the feelings and experiences that move us to be more human. Interested in equity, social justice, psychology, identity, and those eccentricities that put us squarely in the greater whole of humanity as well as mark us as individuals, he believes literature has the power to question dominant culture. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. Ariel lives in Seattle.