Ugh, I feel like being transgender isn’t that hard. That is, on a good day, life isn’t that hard. What’s frustrating is being trans and wanting to be a spiritual writer. So many people out there are touted as geniuses for a few lines of free verse smack talking the patriarchy or pulling the “I’m a minority” card in a literary way. There’s a space for that. But here I’m standing thinking, “When did poetry die, and when did philosophers—gay, straight, trans cis or somewhere in between—stop feeling unity with humankind? When did we split into little whining factions. Oh yeah, postmodernism…

-Joanne von Spanien