Chase Berggrun is a trans poet. They are the author of R E D, forthcoming from Birds, LLC in 2018, and the chapbook Discontent and Its Civilizations: Poems of Erasure, published by jubilat in 2012. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Lambda Literary Spotlight, the PEN Poetry Series, Pinwheel, Sixth Finch, Diagram, The Offing, Prelude, Apogee, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. They received their MFA from New York University.
These poems are from their forthcoming debut collection R E D (Birds, LLC, Winter 2018). They can be found on the internet at www.chaseberggrun.com or @patriphobe.
CHAPTER XXIII
I threw grief-written lines all over my papers
I studied the necessity of no remorse
survived long centuries as an inmate
alone and hidden in the ground
I hastened towards the moment
I care for nothing now except brute action
It will take thousands of men to hold me back
I had been accustomed to obey
Now the old habit was just a nightmare
*
There was something so unhuman in
the snarl and stare that cut through the wide stream of my face
I love this wild beast in me
I was thinking of my appearance
my own sublime animal heat
and clung to hate
The word sounded like music
*
You must be pitiful to your husband when shrivelling his being
I will crush my husband in the folds of my dress
his night shall never end
*
My hate is drifting reefwards
sleeping in the softness of the sunset
Though I am weary
I must try to startle darkness
I must become an oblong disc of light
I must change my own sad dreaminess
to rigid red intention
Though I do not know what I am doing
though it may be too late
though danger on earth and under water
I must follow him to hell
CHAPTER XXIV
Where there is where shall be
blood blood blood
soon and final
blood blood
where there might be
blood a dense blood
again blood again
My language was of blood
and full of movement
of fog and morning far from fog
mouth made for speaking firm
the first forceful master of this monster form
*
Becoming
wondrous
geologic
chemical
magnetic
electric
and warlike
without aid from common men
I tasted enemy tongues to whet desire
to grow greater in the midst of greatest peril
I was still unclean
I still fear his poison
the power that compels my confidence to break
I will inflict a great campaign of preparations against the wolf
then hunt him hollow
*
I curved my shadows tenderly
I felt infected with trouble
a dreamless maybe everlasting emotion
too great for human endurance
I go forth to flood him with agony
I fasten to a faith in steel
We are now drawing towards uneasiness
I am sure some new end