2023 Issue 5 Sept/Oct Focus - Mid-South Magazine

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arts+entertainment the no. 9 The Trans Magical Girl Credo by Lena Chipman I am a Trans Magical Girl! I am chosen of the goddesses Cybele and Inanna, and beloved by the Many-Faced Moon. They smile upon me and imbue me with their power. I am blessed with their secrets and their strength! I come to share their wisdom and knowledge with the world! With my brilliant light, I defend and spread Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love! I am a voice for the voiceless and a beacon for the questioning and the lost. My challenges are many and my foes stronger and older. But I stand with other Magical People and together, we are the rainbow sword and shield that brings Hope to strike down despair! I am a Trans Magical Girl! for someone (luminé) by Lena Chipman I was a ball of wax In darkness, crystallized, smooth, untouched In the blacklight I’d shine for a moment Never warm, slowly fading An aging artifact behind dusty glass “Do not touch!” Each day another sign, a new barrier Razor spines pointed inward Then a spark burst on my glass Blazing fire, growing like a meteor fall Crashing through my transparent walls The heat of your truth and joy (even if you didn’t see it) Melting me Now my flesh is soft sculpture in motion Now my self is liquid raging rivers upon a cartography of broken glass Cutting a new landscape, snapping those spires Your light, your spark, your solar flame My voice – the thunder it calls That dusty glass shattered to glitterdust And now I, too, am a spark Set to ignite a fire. Lena Chipman (she/her/hers) is an out and proud transgender woman, technology executive, hacker, activist, and writer. She channels the joy and sorrow of being a lifelong queer in Memphis into bittersweet bites of text. 28 Go! | Sept+Oct 2023 | focuslgbt.com
The Ballad of Rosie and Rapunzel by Elaina Nicholas There once was a princess in the Kingdom of Nettle. The most beautiful princess there could be, christened Briar Rose for her glorious fiery red hair. Poor Briar had come upon the marrying age, albeit unwillingly. “You are betrothed!” Her father, the king, roared. “I refuse! I do not love him!” She shouted back, “You will do as I say!” He commanded. And with that, Briar ran away. But only so far as to bump into her friend, the scullery maid. “Oh Anya, you must help me!” She pleaded with her. Anya was a witch, at least on her mother’s side. “I’d rather die! I’d rather die!” The princess sobbed into her friend's arms. Anya knew of poor Briar’s plight, for she bemoaned it nightly. “No, dear princess, you are too young to die.” “There is no other way out!” She practically screamed. Anya shushed her, soothing Briar, as she hatched a plan. Briar had agreed to it, once it was all laid out. reconsidering the finality of death. “You will not die but sleep, frozen in time until true love’s kiss awakens you.” Briar looked up from Anya’s tear soaked shoulder. “But how are they to be my true love if we never formally meet?” She asked. “Well you see, when others are in your proximity you may enter their dreams you will be a creature of the night realms, if they are close you may speak to them if you choose.” Briar nodded, “What must I do?” Once Anya had gathered all the proper ingredients she produced a thorn for Briar so that she may prick her finger and begin sleep everlasting. “Good luck, Princess” were the last words she heard before she went on into that great night. When the king found his daughter in such a state he was struck down by grief and refused to tend to his kingdom. The thorn that Anya had used on the Princess began to grow more, soon overrunning the kingdom, and the people grew desperate. As the kingdom fell into despair a young couple had found themselves with child. But they were poor and food was scarce and the mother was always hungry. She pleaded with the father to go into their neighbor’s garden and fetch her some lettuce. The husband complied, but not without reluctance for their neighbor was a witch. But lettuce was eaten and the child was born seemingly without penance. And once the child reached the age of ten her parents relaxed, perhaps the witch was more forgiving than they thought. Their celebration is of course premature, for that very night the witch went and stole their daughter, “a debt overdue,” she said. So the child, who the witch renamed Rapunzel, grew up in a faraway tower while the princess remained asleep. The thorn of Anya had grown into wild thick bushes that completely suffocated the kingdom and beyond, until one day when Rapunzel was fully grown they reached her tower. Rapunzel had grown to despise her captor who neglected her to the point where her hair was never cut and it now winded around her small room in an unkept braid. The thorns had crept into her windows, and one fateful day she found a bird speared upon one. On closer inspection, she realized the bird had not died from a stab wound but rather from a poison that must have come from the thorn itself. Her captor had made the poor choice to sleep unarmed that very night. Taking her revenge, Rapunzel plunged a thorn deep into the witch's chest to make sure she never woke again. With the aid of her hair as thick as a rope she managed to climb down the tower and began her journey homeward, to Nettle. Her long hair dragged behind her making the journey long and exhausting, so in a fit of rage she chopped it to her shoulders, leaving most of it behind but fashioning some of it into a proper rope tied around her body. The journey to Nettle would take three months' time and Rapunzel was already weighed down by the exhaustion of the day. So, she found a patch of soft moss and bedded down. The scene around her shifted. She couldn’t tell you how but something had changed. Maybe it was the lack of thorny branches or the haziness that seemed to accompany the dreaming—or maybe it was the gorgeous woman suddenly standing before her. “I must be dreaming,” Rapunzel whispered, astonished. The lady giggled. “And what makes you say that?” She asked. “Because I’ve never seen someone as pretty as you before,” Rapunzel admitted. The mysterious lady blushed a pretty shade of pink that matched her nightgown. Rapunzel gently took the lady’s hand and kissed it, a courtly gesture she had seen displayed in her books. Sept+Oct 2023 | focuslgbt.com | Go! 29
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2023 Issue 5 Sept/Oct Focus - Mid-South Magazine

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