Five Elegies

Photo: Natascha Graham

Subhaga Crystal Bacon

These poems are part of a manuscript in progress. They elegize trans and gender nonconforming people killed in 2020. The continuing epidemic of violence against trans people, especially trans people of colour, is a slap in the face to the concept of justice in the US and assuredly also globally.

Aja Raquelle Rhone-Spears, 34, Portland, OR, July 28

Few details are known about her death, which occurred at a vigil for another homicide victim.

Rocky, if I may call you that, your sense of fashion
is apparent in every photo. It’s clear that you were vigilant
about your looks: clothes, makeup, hair, nothing to murder
you for. A month has passed, and still the Portland police
hold no one accountable. There’s no more protest
for you, despite being killed by an anonymous brutality.

It’s been a hard summer. So many ways to be brutal  
erupting like flash fires. I sit here trying to fashion
a response, to find the words that will stand in protest  
for your death, a Black trans woman killed at a vigil  
for a Black man shot, nothing do to with the police
who, we could say, started this with Georg Floyd’s murder.

We must not forget his and all the other murders,  
countless, unending that show our basic human brutality.  
I know it’s pointless to lay the blame on the police  
who are doing the job that White folks have fashioned  
for them. So we do our best now to watch, be vigilant  
about what’s done in our names. I write these poems of protest, 

living far from the streets, the epicenters where protest  
looks like a wall of living bodies. Still, there are murders  
like Summer Taylor’s at the Black Femme March, also a vigil.  
An angry man drove his car into dancing bodies. His brutality  
not even called murder after killing a young person in that fashion
and badly injuring another. How can we trust the police?

I was taught long ago that they were our friends, the police,  
the people you would go to for help. During violent racial protest
in my town, those cops gave my father permission, in a fashion,  
to kill whoever got too close. Just drag him inside, not murder.  
I remember how the fires burned and gun shots brutalized 
a Sunday night, how, in our fear, my family gathered to keep vigil. 

Your hometown, another Black man shot, you, Rocky kept vigil 
on the street, then inside someone’s home. Later, the police 
called about a disturbance, they found you stabbed brutally, 
silent witnesses hostile and uncooperative, a kind of protest. 
They’re still not talking about how or why you were murdered. 
Whether accident or intention, someone killed you in either fashion.

Isabella Mia Lofton, Brooklyn, NY, September 7, 2020: A Belle Absente

From a Brooklyn rooftop
Labor Day mostly over, 
maybe alcohol, maybe sex,
maybe pushed, maybe fell 
to the pavement and broke her neck.

What do we know about her
but Chicago, New York,
video dancing in wig and lace,
long nailed, plump lipped,
curvy, feminine, alive?

We know this: One more died 
too soon. Someone wrote:
it’s no crime if you trick him,
I notice the possible trickery
of words and their cruelty.

Another Trans Woman lost
to what’s unknown. I look
for things to hold as truth: 
words, actions, faults found 
to close this story with.

Sorrow has its own story.
Birth, childhood, youth
that burns for taboo, for wild
nights, hook ups, and fright 
from night’s razor-sharp brink. 

No one’s said her age. Young, 
under thirty-five, the most
a Trans woman such as she
can expect to be among 
the breathing, not a ghost.

Months pass in this year of chaos;
so much taken by force, thirty 
murdered, more wounded
in body and twin-spirit: burned, 
cut, shot, drowned, dosed.

I write this for her, for them, to lift
their lives from the snippet of news 
showing no proof of crime. To protect  
their freedom to be unmolested, to live.
Someone must honour their chosen selves.

Brooklyn DeShauna Smith, 20, Shreveport, LA, October 7: A Found Poem

It has happened again.

Shreveport Police responded 
to reports of a dead person 
located the decedent, 20-year-old 
Brooklyn DeShauna Smith, 
inside the apartment suffering 
from at least one gunshot injury.

Born and raised in Shreveport. 
She studied cosmetology 
had worked as a call center agent. 

Full of positivity, good humor, 
and family the typical 20-year-old 
woman. Vibrant and eager to embrace 
what the world had to offer.

She is the 21st Black trans person 
the 20th Black trans woman murdered.  
She is the 5th from Louisiana, 
all were Black trans women.  

She is one of 12 aged 25 or younger 
and one of the four youngest total

How does a 20-year-old end up dying 
alone in an apartment from a gunshot 
wound in the middle of the day? 

The number of trans neighbors murdered
in broad daylight is on the rise. 
A society that doesn’t acknowledge 
the visibility and validity of trans folx, 
especially trans woman especially 
Black trans women.

Tony McDade, 38, Tallahassee, FL, May 27

Somebody that I gave my loyalty to allowed her son and nephews to jump me.

Let’s be clear. You wanted to kill those
who jumped you, five against one,
beat you in a fetal position.

You wanted to kill, even, yourself—
made many attempts—or in a shootout
with the cops, who, you said: they see a gun 
they just shoot . . . So that’s what I’m pushing for, 
because I don’t want to be here 
on earth dealing with the government.

Some say, Tony, that the government isn’t responsible
for our lives or your death.
They’re not responsible
for our health and safety, for our liberty, and justice.
Some say, Tony, that you were a girl, some a man.

After you stabbed Malik with a knife, payback for the fight,
the cops hunted you to the Leon Arms, and there, at 10:59 am, 
someone said,

I just heard pow pow pow pow pow, 
so I’m like d— they shooting early in the day time, 
it’s day time they shooting.

Tony, they say you pulled a gun, pointed a gun,
so shots were fired, and then you were gone.

Queasha D. Hardy, 24, Baton Rouge, LA, July 27: A Pantoum

I love the skin I'm in and theres nothing you can say or do that's gonna stop gods plan.

Though she lived as a woman, police identified her 
as Kevin Hardy, saying Hardy's next of kin requested 
she be identified as male. Baton Rouge police do not believe 
Hardy was targeted because she was a trans woman.

So she was misgendered, as Kevin Hardy's next of kin requested,
not recognizing the one known as Queasha, who lived as a woman.
Hardy wasn’t targeted because she was a trans woman; police say
they’ve got no other motive for her shooting.

Her killer must’ve recognized her as Queasha, who lived as a woman—
surely the way she was dressed, her hair and makeup—
what possible motive could there be to explain her shooting
on a rainy day, in the street, in the middle of the afternoon. 

Surely she was being herself, had done her hair and makeup,
was on her way somewhere, possibly to the salon to work,
a rainy day, in the street, in the middle of the afternoon, 
when someone shot her and left her there alone to die.

Quesha was on her way; ran her own salon, proud of her work
although on a Monday afternoon in July, she must’ve been free
when someone shot her and left her there alone to die.
We still don’t know where she was going or why she died.

On that last Monday afternoon in July, she was still free
to dream her dreams, to simply be herself, Queasha,
wherever it was she was going before she died,
loving the skin she was in, still following God’s plan.