[Sort of] Pantoum for Caitlyn Jenner

I am Caitlyn Jenner
6 ‘ 2 “ Olympian
I was running endless laps around the track when they pulled me out,
finding gluttony in the surgeon’s knife.

6 ‘ 2 “ Olympian
My body stretched tight by its own sinews and inert,
finding gluttony in the surgeon’s knife
tearing apart the sausage chrysalis

[the day I learned I was a sinner.]

My body stretched tight by its own sinews, and inert.
The sky took to the clouds like sandpaper
tearing apart the sausage chrysalis,
the day my life was less like a track meet and more like a snow-blown wilderness.

[You really picked yourself a winner.]

The sky took to the clouds like sandpaper, and
burgundy crumbs scattered on tufted pile for the children to follow. To what end?
The day my life was less like a track meet and more like a snow-blown wilderness,
credits rolling across the flat-sky screen.

Burgundy crumbs scattered on tufted pile for the children to follow. To what end? Only
a thousand sucked-in cold breaths finding my father’s rifle still in its case.
Like credits rolling across the flat-sky screen.
So it’s not really about gun control.

[So what is it about then? Still.]

A thousand sucked-in cold breaths finding my father’s rifle still in its case,
just another story on the magazine cover.
So it’s not really about gun control. I’m
learning whether plastic can fill our bullet holes, like IKEA flat-pack houses for refugees.

Just another story upon the magazine cover,
cast off like polystyrene and the faces of ourselves, as we
learn whether plastic can fill our bullet holes, like IKEA flat-pack houses for refugees.
Did you burn all the letters that Bruce wrote to Caitlyn, like disused organs in hospital incinerators?

Cast off like polystyrene and the faces of ourselves –
commited to smoke, the day the sky forgot God.
Did you burn all the letters that Bruce wrote to Caitlyn, like disused organs in hospital incinerators?
The day Hera took aim at Zeus, and pulled the trigger.

[What was it like, to be called up

in the middle of dinner, to be told your father

is now Caitlyn Jenner?]

Committed to smoke, the day the sky forgot God.
I was 16 when they pulled me out of English class, to say they’d found my father’s car.
The day Hera took aim at Zeus, and pulled the trigger.
And I’ve been 20 years feet-deep in this fake snow, waiting for someone

to shake the globe.

So it’s not really about gun control. But I’m also not really Caitlyn Jenner. I’m more like the other one. The one Donald Trump called ‘piglet’,

[only thinner.]

By Jo-Ella Sarich

Biography:

Jo-Ella Sarich has practised as a lawyer for a number of years, recently returning to poetry after a long hiatus. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a number of online and in-print publications, including The New Verse News, Cleaver Magazine, Blackmail Press, Barzakh Magazine, Poets Reading the News, The Galway Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, takahē magazine and the Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017.