Sundress Reads: Review of Transitory

I read the poems in Subhaga Crystal Bacon’s Transitory (BOA Editions 2023) with a heavy heart following the events of the past few weeks. On April 25th 2024, I watched police in riot gear storm my college’s encampment and brutalize my classmates, peers, and friends, specifically targeting black and brown students, as we peacefully protested the genocide in Gaza. This poetry collection honors trans lives that were lost in 2020 to violence, and here we are four years later, with violence and grief continuing to permeate our lives as more Palestinians are martyred every day.

Bacon uses her collection to ensure that the lives and legacies of the trans people she dedicates her poetry to—the ones that were murdered because their mere existence has turned into a political issue for people to debate—aren’t reduced to a statistic. Through her elegies, she humanizes trans lives lost to violence, reminding the reader that they had lives outside of their deaths. Bacon begins the collection with “Cautiously Watching for Violence,” a poem where the speaker opens up about their own experience with transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny. The poem begins with the speaker recounting a violent threat they received from a man over the phone: “I’m going to come where you live / and rape you and kill you” (13). Although I don’t know if Bacon is speaking from her own experience or the experience of another trans person, I nevertheless commend her for writing so unapologetically about the violent transphobia that runs rampant in our society. 

This collection is full of bravery. If I’ve learned anything from this collection, it’s to be steadfast in advocating for justice. Later in the same poem, the speaker recounts how even in the present day, they still are subject to transphobia and homophobia: 

“Even, at sixty, walking my foofy dog across the street

in the suburbs, a spring day, from the car window

he says get out of the way you ugly old dyke” (14).

Even though society is more progressive than it was years and years ago, such words are still spewing with hatred. I think some people turn a blind eye, naively, to the transphobia and homophobia that is prevalent in today’s world because they compare today to society decades ago. They choose to only look at the progress we’ve made. But just because younger generations are more progressive and politically active, just because we have slightly more trans and queer representation in media now than we did decades ago, doesn’t mean we should stop fighting. 

Although every poem in this collection is poignant, one particularly moving poem is “Alexa: Neulisa Luciano Ruiz, 28, Tao Baja, Puerto Rico, February 24.” In this poem dedicated to Alexa, the speaker recounts the details of Alexa’s death and how her killers filmed her murder, posting it to social media. I can’t help but re-read the last stanza constantly:

“In the headlights’ glare, ten shots, laughter

on the video they shared on social media

because it is allowed” (18).

This image haunts me. Not only are these people ending a trans life, but they’re taking pride in it, relishing in it with laughter like it’s a celebration. From the poem “Nina Pop, 28, Sikeston, MO, May 3,” I can’t stop thinking about the line, “What happened next, only you and he know, / and neither of you is speaking” (27). Nina physically can’t speak because she’s no longer alive; she no longer has a body or a voice. The man who murdered her, on the other hand, is not speaking because he doesn’t want to own up to the atrocity he committed. When I read “John Scott/Scottlynn Kelly DeVore, 51, Augusta, GA, March 12,” I keep circling back to the line, “For Scott’s loved ones, a nightmare that’s unending” (20). Although as a reader I am greatly impacted while reading this collection, what I feel does not even compare to what the families of these trans lives lost to violence are experiencing. They have to reckon with these tragedies every single day, the loss and grief seeping into their daily life.

Although Transitory was so difficult for me to read, I am so grateful I did. I implore everyone to read this collection because it is valuable and necessary. It is so important to raise awareness and open people’s eyes to the brutal reality that trans people are forced to endure daily. I’m not religious, but I really hope every trans life that was brutally taken, I hope they’re all together in their own trans heaven together, somewhere safer than this world ever was to them. While reading this collection, I thought a lot about the chants my peers and I sang at our college’s encampment, and how they linger in my mind even weeks later. In particular, I think about the chant, “free the people, free them all,” amidst the fight for Palestinian liberation, and how it connects to Maya Angelou’s words: “The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.” Let us never stop advocating for the liberation of all people, for trans and queer people, for people of color, for Indigenous People, and for the liberation of Palestine, Congo, Sudan, and Haiti.

Transitory is available at BOA Editions

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Annalisa Hansford (they/them) studies Creative Writing at Emerson College. Their poetry appears or is forthcoming in The West Review, The Lumiere Review, and Heavy Feather Review. They are the co-editor-in-chief of hand picked poetry, a poetry editor for The Emerson Review and Hominum Journal, and a reader for Sundress Publications.