Becoming<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My identity is the abandoned house
\nneighbors point
\nto tell frightening stories about.
\nI know which ones they believe.
\nMy identity is a black joke on Father\u2019s Day
\na ghetto butterfly in the suburbs
\na porn studio
\nis not a window
\nI stopped looking at
\nothers in order to understand
\nmyself.
\nI am a bearded woman
\na mid life crisis
\na body bag
\na place to dispose all of my dead weight.
\nI am an unkept bedroom.
\nI know where everything is.
\nI am trying to be as fluid as word
\nplay.
\nI want my character to be
\nrearranged and made better.
\nI am a poet.
\nI write to make love to my existence.
\nI am an old folks home.
\nThere are war stories in my make up.
\nSometimes I grow tired of fighting.
\nI am an antediluvian breath who
\ncan hardly hold themself in.
\nI spend so much time thinking about
\nmy construct
\nI forget to thank ancestors who
\ndrink heartache like wine.
\nI am twenty,
\nand I am trying to understand my place in
\nthis world so I document the person
\nmy sadness makes me.
\nWhen I believed I did not have a right
\nto exist,
\nI stopped writing about what I
\ncouldn\u2019t change.
\nI wasn\u2019t the person I wanted to be
\nso I evolved
\nbecame someone who wasn\u2019t as
\nnear as then.
\nI am unlearning all of the selves
\nwho have been created for me.
\nI am trying to be my own god.
\nI don\u2019t want someone else to take credit for saving me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A self-described “gender fluid person,” Amethyst Dauphin<\/a> was part of a slam poetry team preparing to represent Seattle at Brave New Voices,<\/a> an international poetry festival. Dauphin aims to document the path taken to understand their gender, and reflects a deep regard for language rooted in the experience of growing up in a household where English, Spanish, French and Creole were spoken on a daily basis. Dauphin is a teaching artist, and has performed with Kwame Dawes, Rafael Casal and Buddy Wakefield, as well as Seattle-area musicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Becoming My identity is the abandoned house neighbors point to tell frightening stories about. I know which ones they believe. My identity is a black joke on Father\u2019s Day a ghetto butterfly in the suburbs a porn studio is … Continue reading