
Poetry | Two poems by Carl Capitane
Words by Carl Capitane and image by Niamh Walsh-Vorster
A Break (Prelude)
Softness saves
So brew gently on your pain
Hum it to sleep, every night, with passed-down songs of memory and amnesia
The same ones your mother would sing before the relationship got heavy with queerness
Suckled lollipops, the ones with the gooey centres, sooth aching throats
The screaming hurts your throat, my darling, so I bought you some lollipops
I hope they help
Rest easy, my darling, you are fighting hard to stay here, please stay awhile
I will make up new hymns that don’t hurt as much
keep them in my pocket
That way we can both sing our traumas to sleep
I said that we can both sing our traumas to sleep
You woke up in the morning with tears sitting on your cheeks
You told me that you felt intimate today
You told me that the lollipops helped a little
We both made the bed, opened the windows, and breathed some light in
Good News
Did you hear of the boy who became a girl?
The one that traded in silence for visibility
And visibility for violence
I hear he now wears dresses longer than his feet
And that his feet barely touch the ground
I hear that he contains untapped worlds:
Wardrobes of wigs and costumes and affirmations that you could only dream of
I hear that he no longer prays
He left Jesus in the closet
Along with all his ties and leathered shoes and his father’s disappointment
He occasionally goes back into the closet to fetch his shoes and ties
(but not Jesus, never Jesus)
He occasionally wears his shoes and ties because the disappointment stings too much
But that’s only occasionally
On most days he equates the sun to his queerness
And takes in its warmth and sincerity
On most days he comes back home shivering quietly
Grateful that the aesthetic didn’t kill
BIO: I write from a point of departure of memory and more so, how remembering can liberate and conversely re-traumatise. My writing deliberately tries to interrogate my lived experiences along with the objective world around me and how those relations inform how I breathe through time and space as a black, queer, femme body while attempting to heal.

