As queer, transgender man storytelling is integral to my survival. In essence, it is how queers find community and live as our authentic selves, through our own imagination, and creative pieces. For me as a spoken word poet, it is how I communicate and preserve my identity. That

is why storytelling, especially in under-represented communities, is so important. It helps form community and express identity, as well as self, in ways that normal human speech and communication could never.

Regarding creativity, it is also a concept that is integral to the survival of communities. Without creativity and imagination, we would lose the conception of self, especially of the future, which gives us infinite hope that we can create change in our broken world.

Through The Creative Process, I am connecting with other queer creatives and creating new communities with them. My most recent poems have been published in Amlit, my university’s literary magazine. In my future, at least within the next year, I intend to publish a poetry collection before heading off to obtain my Masters & eventual Ph.D. Within my Masters, I intend to obtain a degree in Women’s,

Gender & Sexuality Studies with a focus specifically on the oral narratives of transgender poetics as they relate to sexual revolutions. My Ph.D. will focus on something similar in that realm, with an intention of eventually conducting surveys and workshops with fellow queer individuals and colleagues.

Tell us something about the natural world that you love and don’t want to lose.

“ ... a sunset of lolling, laughing trees ”

Tree imagery is incredibly prominent in my poetry. I use it as a way to express not only growth and connection but also revolution and anger. So I never want to lose the emotions that trees can help me convey. Furthermore, as someone whose memories have been lost to trauma, trees help me concretely cement points in time that I’ve spent with people. For example, swinging in a hammock with my sister between the two birches in our back yard.

What is your personal sustainability pledge to take action to leave the world a better place?

To take action in my own community, as that is where action is best taken. For me, it is working with my town council to create a community center out of the old school.

Sunflowers

My mom and I are growing sunflowers again.

Mammoths that waved their trunks in

our kitchen window,

an echoing chorus of swing sets creak,

as I pump legs, water,

Drip

Drop

I flop,

fold over,

curl

and land on my feet again.

You see,

talking with my mother,

is as easy as it is to balance dew

on a tipsy mint leaf,

it is a fight against gravity and inertia,

the feeling of falling, and already flying,

only to spit yourself stretching – down.

It is,

so damn hard to cut these weeds extinct.

As they too bleed green onto my bedroom walls,

“I wish I didn’t have to be here” but still, I am,

rooted to where I grew:

her.

Winding roots a crown,

of brown locks

she says I have my father’s hair

but I am nowhere near straight,

so,

I shave myself a chainsaw,

and create petals from bloody

woodchips, sawdust my seeds

as me.