Reading from “Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli

Poetry Lunch S5E9

Reading an excerpt from “Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli from Water I Won’t Touch, Copper Canyon Press.

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Not feeling a lot to say except thanks, to the poet and publisher and the poem for inviting a space that’s free to feel all the damn hard things I’m feeling.

Change on top of change and it just keeps coming. I love the idea that we could arrive, after all, through all of it, to a place where our hearts are simple again. That we can feel fed, and even be seen. That “just being alive” is, indeed, the most important part — goodness and do you feel the pain behind that short word ‘just?’ It makes me feel all the horrendous that gets you to the part where the basic, the very basic thing of breathing in a body with some level of consciousness, is what’s important. Because that’s something that’s easy to miss if you haven’t had it threatened. And bless those who haven’t! But goodness double bless those who have and who continue to.

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Link to purchase

Get the book here: Water I Won't Touch.