x y r j/ j h a s t a i n

m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m

memo i r - $ 1 0 . 0 0

“xyr creates a new space where the reader can explore the queer identity through memoir-like prose poems. This space feels both individual and inclusive at the same time. It speaks to defining a new we.”

Stephen S. Mills, author of He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices

“This prose, this play script, this queer theory is not just linguistic passage. It rattles—hissing zzz—readers’ bodies to the core. Molten.”

Lori Anderson Moseman, author of All Steel

“The space for an epiphanic transmogrification is literally carved out on the visceral-textual body in this remarkable document of blood ritual: blood spatters on the audience, too.”

Julian Brolaski, author of Advice for Lovers

“This work, with its keening tremble and divinatory power, creates a powerful magic, a rant against annihilation.”

Samuel Ace, co-author of Stealth

praise for xyr :

“This book not only questions our preconceived notions about gender and pronouns, but also about genre. xyr creates a new space where the reader can explore the queer identity through memoir-like prose poems. This space feels both individual and inclusive at the same time. It speaks to defining a new we.”

Stephen S. Mills, author of He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices

“Sear. With stamina, with engaging activism, seer j/j hastain sears the lingual. xyr, a pronoun of choice pronounced zeer, is a liminal space—a blood opera of the body as change. This spiritual rant sears xyr womb xyr limbs xyr habits xyr transgenerative stance. This prose, this play script, this queer theory is not just linguistic passage It rattles—hissing zzz—readers’ bodies to the core. Molten. Flaming acacia. Reading xyr, xyr body cannot remain as is: xyr body must torque—dash keyboards, heft roof beams. Guts got to get outside. Mount a hillside mid-hailstorm. Scatter scree. Expansive, explosive interrogative, xyr is a must. Seminal work. A womb upturned. Character—xyr character—keening anew.”

Lori Anderson Moseman, author of All Steel

“j/j/ hastain’s xyr inverts myths—not only of a stable, binary gender, but of a singular selfhood and finally mythology itself. Inversion is creaturalized in the ‘inverse centaur’ (pronoun ‘it’): a horse head with a human body. From this ‘mostly tenuous and not enabled place’ that is ‘just under the uttering surface of a dark water,’ j/j spouts gory premonitions, a dark opera inked in red, sympathy for a tender winged Lucifer. The space for an epiphanic transmogrification is literally carved out on the visceral-textual body in this remarkable document of blood ritual: blood spatters on the audience, too.”

Julian Brolaski, author of Advice for Lovers

“In j/j hastain’s xyr, the divine and the rush of pronouns upends he and she, not for their opposites or their binaries, but for a vertical interrogation down to the myth and the rescued taproot of the original gardens. There is skin, an opera of song, where voice is primary before language. Here stands the hanging pendulous cock, the holes, the heroes and lovers of the infinite genders that exist within each body. hastain stands upright and implacable to the tyranny of a language, a troubled and greedy patriarch, that has accumulated, over eons, all manners of domination and oppression. Xe insists on new habits, that we break our calcified perceptions for an interrogation that starts in the body and a new consciousness. This work, with its keening tremble and divinatory power, creates a powerful magic, a rant against annihilation.”

Samuel Ace, co-author of Stealth

xyr: a radical renovation of pronouns

j/j hastain

monkey puzzle press harrison, arkansas

copyright © 2014 j/j hastain

all rights reserved. no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief excerpts. printed in the united states of america.

m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e s s807 s. oak st.

unit 3harrison, ar 72601

monkeypuzzlepress.com

cover & interior designnate jordon

cover photoj/j hastain

“fortunately the other is here to save me” — rene crevel

table of contents

1. we had no paper to write it down so we just said it again and again / 1

2. the man who used to be my father / 2

3. we sleep; we wake / 3

4. back and forth like Griffin and Sabine postcards / 4

5. I thank you for everything, each layer, until the millionth egg / 5

6. learning that stretch marks are a fact for me / 6

7. a woman carrying water back to her tribal village in a bucket made of dried grasses and reeds: a bucket that by design, leaks / 7

8. Carolee Schneeman pulling a scroll out of her vagina as performance / 9

9. my heart has been reinvented so many times in the last few weeks, since we have been spending more and more time together / 10

10. self-ethnography never stalling / 11

11. isn’t the border of trauma also the shared border of healing? / 12

12. everything sticky with wattage and hints of future tomb / 13

13. redemption via other / 14

14. cordials made from caught liquids / 15

15. the atom in the atom, the atom and the atom / 16

16. consistent longing for the city while in the forest and for the forest while in / 17

17. could suck the mythological quality / 18

18. phoria or serum / 19

19. as an utmost compatible violence / 20

20. to stay with me as I burn / 21

21. a series of me / 22

apogees and their connective ducts - an opera of grief in five acts / 23

22. I am asking you to cross / 35

23. a fervent heat made from tea bags which, in their darkness, are an inspiration for and an epitome of red / 36

24. a way to browse pause / 37

25. smash inherited pronouns / 38

26. after rites of passage soak the lovers’ bodies in a tri-mix of tea bags / 39

27. following diagonals into demilune / 40

28. to divine the corvine, again / 41

29. reflexive eidolon / 42

30. from the position of a dyad xe / 43

extro / 46

1

we had no paper to write it down so we just said it again and again

begin within benison. the knees bruised, tender. prostrate knees are little arcs, are ways of proceeding. as proceeding, the words “dear deva,” were being pronounced maniacally. mania followed by a flood of filial pictures. fractures of pictures of a lineage of kneeling.

noting, xe noticed it was not the same to attempt to pray to devas. some-thing felt different now, than it did when xe used to pray to God, when God was believed in, back then. this difference often brought xem grief. even amidst all of that meditation they said was supposed to help things. even during Kundalini yoga and practice of ecstatic postures. yes, grief in a body in that form felt like the organs grunting all at once: a collective humming that did not hone xem.

xyr friends regularly asked xem about the grief. whether or not it made xem feel like ending xyr own life. they found themselves wanting to trans-late xem for xem. to translate xem to xemself: proposing ways of reliev-ing, attempting to comfort. “but the excess dark hair on your back and on your face makes you that much more magical,” they emphasized. “if you squint while looking at you, it looks like you have beards of light, hirsute light.” but there was never a whole response to that, from xem.

the friends often reported to each other after spending time with xem, that xe felt like xe was stuck just under the uttering surface of a dark wa-ter. they mentioned to each other that they wished they could somehow get down below the surface to xem. reside with xem there, in that barely able to breathe, barely able to continue, but mostly tenuous and not en-abled place.

xyr 1

2

the man who used to be my father

in preparation for dreaming, every night, xe began by saying “dear deva, dear ephemeral hands.” regardless of this work in effort to curb what was just outside of view, there was never a guarantee xe would not be haunted by visages of the trinity when xe went to sleep. it was a difficult thing to handle, really, the guilt of their presence there, amidst so much effort to eliminate them.

it frustrated xem that things did not match up, that realms were mis-aligned. xe would be there in xyr awake state, with xyr therapist, talk-ing about telepathy and accelerated astral projection practices and that there xe would feel so powerful, but when alone in xyr bed, that place that “should mean rest” (or so xyr therapist said), xe could not ensure xe would not be visited by that same gaunt image of Christ. in the detested image of the haunt, Christ always appeared as a rabid dog with an accor-dion body made of three moving segments and the face of xyr first father. xe abhorred that face. all it meant to xem when it contextualized xem as xyr history. there, face was entirely without grace. was a violent rotating, a switching space.

when xe had the reoccurring dream, xe would wake with the taste of met-al coins in xyr mouth. would wake with the feeling that those same words were there with xem, ripe somehow, waiting on xyr lips. xe was convinced the words were waiting for xem to speak them. sometimes, in an effort to experiment with xyr agency, xe did all xe could to not speak them. visual-ized ropes or toggles holding closed xyr mouth. imagined applying dark whips as a lashing to the tongue that was trying to lash out.

however, during these visions, images of xyr mouth always moved from the place where they were being kept, controlled. the words moved into xyr womb. since xe did not exactly relate to xyr womb (xe was still waiting for approval from xyr therapist to be able to get bottom surgery) xe knew this was a way the words got through the barricades xe erected. xe cried when xe felt the words spill out from down there, from between xyr legs, as a thick, black dripping: ink. a new way to write.

2 j/j hastain

3

we sleep; we wake

as the sun began to set, xe was sitting on a patch of dried grass at the city park. xe had been sitting on that same patch, upright for hours. had expe-rienced an inner hysteria at the fact that the image of the trinity with xyr first father’s face, had somehow become so indigenous to the qualities of xyr bed. xe wondered if xe would ever be able to really rest.

xe decided to stay there that day because xe thought xe might be able to dream a different type of dream there, vertical. “how can I expect to have a different visitation if I can only produce reoccurring dreams of the im-ages that haunt?” xe muttered to xemself, aloud.

xe pretended not to notice when children of passers-by pointed to xem, pointed xem out: “why does that lady have hair on her face?” xe heard one child say. the parent looked to see if xe moved xyr gaze toward the child. xe did not, so the parent moved the child along, lifted them up by their arm a little to hurry the process, as they turned the corner. xe caught all of this in xyr peripheral vision. it made the humming behind xyr eyes worse.

xe exhaled hard and brought xyr attention to the backs of xyr closed eye-lids. held gaze there with a harshness (which usually made all things out-side of that harshness, numbed), then loosened xyr gaze but kept xyr eyes closed. it was at the moment of the musculature loosening that they ap-peared, many of them, in the shape of an unfolded scroll like the linked fingers of surgical gloves. individually, the manikin hands were each no larger than a bread box, but together, the entire group of them, appeared to be very large. yes, felt like a largess, liquid presence. a vastness tilted, toward states of psychic meat.

xyr 3

4

back and forth like Griffin and Sabine postcards

their story related to the trinity just as xyr story did, but in a different way. theirs related via a trilogy. its many pieces made their tale more durable. began with reference of the wine glass, its power over the small tea cup. then together, Griffin and Sabine referenced the still half-drawn flower that flowed up from between them. the pieces of their story were like flashes, relating as a depth, relaying abysmal feelings by way of passing time. the waiting periods between postcards were an important part of the pull.

“if only I could choose what would wed itself to me. it seems that Griffin and Sabine had at least some semblance of choice, even if they did not choose who would make the first mark or how it would be made,” xe said, while pondering the dyad quality of the postcards. one by one, cards passing through xyr hands. over and over again xe passed through the stack.

how excruciatingly short xyr nails are. xe remembered as xe stared at xyr outstretched hands, how xyr mother used to paint them with that polish that was encouraged in aversion therapy.

4 j/j hastain

5

I thank you for everything, each layer, until the millionth egg

in the opera xe began writing (after reflecting for many weeks on Griffin and Sabine), xe was devising a depiction. a strange portrait. having had its mouth surgically closed up because it was a threat to the patriarchy, the Character in the portrait literally had pieces of metal soldered over its maw. regardless of the fact the Character could not physically use its voice anymore because its maw had been trapped, it trained itself to psychically use its voice. xe debated with xemself about how to portray that complexity. “yes,” xe thought. “it would have to have a mental voice.”

the image xe decided upon (in order to most accurately render the strange portrait and its complex voice into something visible), was of a oscillating-ly dark and luminous egg. how many sides does an egg have? xe wondered. but it was not until xe began to consider whether or not the egg is filled or empty that xe spoke: “one if it’s filled in, two if it’s hollow.” xe was aware that with that statement xe was at the middle of a not-yet-known question.

xyr 5

grammatical diagram:

xe-subject xyr-singular possessive

xem-object xems-double possessive (a dyad combination of single xem that while moving toward xems also maintain individual xem-ness) xemself-reflexive pronoun / intensive pronoun

acknowledgements

Heartfelt thanks go out to Tod Thilleman, Marthe Reed, Andrea Gibson and Dina Paulson. Your attentive reading of this text nurtured me. Thanks to Julieanne Combest for conversation and care. Thanks to Heather Goodrich (inventor of “Feminist Hysteria”) for that one conversation of sincere synonym. Though you never told me what your Feminist Hysteria is (I still want to know!), it was wonderful and relieving to me to find someone else who intuits the space of hysteria as the place of potential emancipation. I became a little less lonely after that conversation. Thanks, Heather: hysterics unite! Special thanks to my sweetheart, Tracy, for being impetus and form by which follow-through happens.

Thanks to the following journals where subsections of xyr have been published: Caliban Online, Housefire Press, Toad Suck Review, publishing genius, and The Collagist.

about the author

j/j hastain is a queer, mystic, seer, singer, photographer, lover, priest/ess, gender shaman and writer. As artist and activist of the audible, j/j is the au-thor of several cross-genre books and enjoys ceremonial performances in an ongoing project regarding gender, shamanism, eros and embodiments.

x y r j/ j h a s t a i n

m o n k e y p u z z l e p r e s s . c o m

memo i r - $ 1 0 . 0 0

“xyr creates a new space where the reader can explore the queer identity through memoir-like prose poems. This space feels both individual and inclusive at the same time. It speaks to defining a new we.”

Stephen S. Mills, author of He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices

“This prose, this play script, this queer theory is not just linguistic passage. It rattles—hissing zzz—readers’ bodies to the core. Molten.”

Lori Anderson Moseman, author of All Steel

“The space for an epiphanic transmogrification is literally carved out on the visceral-textual body in this remarkable document of blood ritual: blood spatters on the audience, too.”

Julian Brolaski, author of Advice for Lovers

“This work, with its keening tremble and divinatory power, creates a powerful magic, a rant against annihilation.”

Samuel Ace, co-author of Stealth