Ezra Fox lives and writes in San Francisco, CA. In their writing, Ezra is curious about “impermanence,” and “non-duality,” and how it pertains to their subjects of lineage, queerness, and spirituality. You can find Ezra’s work in Zone 3, Poiesis, Glassworks Magazine, and elsewhere.
The Yoga Instructor Tells Me My Inward Hip Rotation Is Strong
but what she doesn’t know
is that to walk inward,
to collapse the hips
and fold the pelvis
is a queer boy’s wet
daydream.
How a body learns
to shrink itself
smaller than inspection.
Survival has always been
a kind of deflection.
If I can become one
dimensional, can slide
through this life
like a sheet of paper,
than perhaps, I can live
just long enough
to enjoy it.
Year seven. The biology lab,
cold as a scalpel’s edge.
They demanded I heed
the dark invitation to slice
open a frog in the name of science.
Hunched in the principal’s office,
my body already knowing
what refusal feels like.
How many times have I
been asked to dissect myself?
To lay out my transness,
to explain the mechanics
of my becoming?
As if, gender is something
that could be understood
through forceps, and fluorescent light.
I will not make this dead being dance.
I will not make myself a specimen.
Instead, I am tracing amphibian resilience.
Consider the leopard frog,
how it can reabsorb
its own reproductive tissues,
remake itself without apology
or explanation, sliding between
water and earth.