What happens when you are a bird and want to be a bee?, by Suvojit Banerjee

Today, a poem by Suvojit Banerjee, who I found via a post by him at the Rattle's Poets Respond Facebook group where he posted this (prose)-poem, also cross-posted at his blog here.  Poet's note about the poem: "... wrote this poem last week as a reaction to Trump's ban on transgenders serving in the military, though my poem touches on the reality of seclusion that they face from all parts of society."

What happens when you are a bird and want to be a bee?
by Suvojit Banerjee

Perched in a Bengal sun and a world full of binaries,
a spirit seeks validation in begging, yet there’s no Wikipedia
article about what she’s pleading for.

Retorting gazes that burn him with disgust are surprisingly united.
Some take the shape of his parents, some Youtube comments,
some are even his own image that still has makeup and
dried up blood.

A cinema-hall full of people laugh at iridescent jokes doled out
that hurt like a train, even more than when the officer-in-charge
asked her to strip down because there was a bulge
in her pants. Lying down in the training camp’s hard cot,
she remembers an equally deranged afternoon when
her dad had taught her that there were only
men and women in this world with the neatness of a
belt.

Five years ago, a man thought transforming into a woman
would finally make him whole, so he borrowed another man’s
writings from a hundred years back that told stories of a woman
who wanted to be a man. Later that year, the man was
surrounded by a thousand eyes as his body slowly entered the
crematorium. His soul, however, was burned an eon back.

When the news spreads, the Virginia sun is still busy painting the sky
with the color of an egg yolk; the familiarity of both is not lost to those
who read the stories of Greek heroes slaying mythical monsters. Only these monsters were danger close, even closer than the uncle who slid his hands
inside the guy’s pants because he wasn’t like other boys.

The incinerator slowly burned all the flesh, and people enjoyed it with a couple of beers;
For there were only ones and zeroes in this world, and one-ones and zero-zeroes
were thrown out of heaven.

__________________________________________

About the author:  Suvojit Banerjee has seen twenty eight summers, but he doesn’t remember all of them; his existence is torn between the suburbs in West Bengal he grew up in, and the city called Atlanta he now lives in. The world around him adorns many masks, and so does he, while roaming around its streets with the eyes as a journal and his soul as a pen. He is searching for answers in this surreal yet slimy maze, but the questions keep on changing every time.
His poems and prose have been previously published in Silver Birch Press, and also featured in places like eFiction India, Kind of a Hurricane Press, The Camel Saloon, The Word Couch, HackWriters, Voices de la Luna, Tuck Magazine, UUT Poetry and The Stray Branch Literary Magazine. His poems have also been featured in the book 'A Significant Anthology', which covers 175 writers from all over the globe. He observes, sometimes giving up consciousness in return. It is a dangerous thing, this silent stalking of nostalgia, but he has a maddening urge. He has to follow the trail.