Connor and Jack discuss Jordan Rice's "Epithalamion." To read the poem, see below or go here: https://blackbird.vcu.edu/v14n2/poetry/rice_j/epithalamion_page.shtml To check out her collection Constellarium: http://orisonbooks.com/product/constellarium-paper/ For the article referenced in the podcast: https://2paragraphs.com/2014/03/what-its-like-to-be-transgender-by-jordan-rice/ Find us on facebook at: facebook.com/closetalking Find us on twitter at: twitter.com/closetalking You can always send us an e-mail with thoughts on this or any of our previous podcasts, as well as suggestions for future shows, at [email protected]. Epithalamion By: Jordan Rice From here, nowhere’s absent shame. The body’s rumored dissolute for its mutability. Even speech— the clear-spoke & the speaking, my mind’s aroar in hoary rasp. No voice carries. I try every one, even apology & rhetoric: the apsis of our fall. Listen. Around us whirs the sex I’m to become—violent, exact. I etch up another voice within your silence. Say I’m sorry. Say I am sorry. Say again I had no choice. I lost one self to this other & killed our child’s father. He’ll keep me in old photos: thin frame, red beard. Barbarossa, our priest once called me. What will he tell our son? —Your father disappeared. Speaking with the dead makes witchery. He transubstantiated. There was no sign of this proclivity when I bound them at the wrists & blessed them by our custom.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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