Passage | Kerry Shawn Keys

The fountain of Kerry Shawn Keys’ poetry is in the Appalachian Mountains, urban America, India, Brazil and Lithuania. From 1998 to 2000, he taught translation theory and creative composition as a Fulbright Associate Professor at Vilnius University. His work ranges from under-mountain vagrant-pastoral and urban-salvage to theatre-dance pieces to flamenco to children’s books to meditations on the Tao Te Ching to a polyphonic epic-book poem set in India. Some recent works: Pienas (prose-poems, tales and plays), Kitos Knygas, 2013; New Poetry from China, 1917-2017, co-transl. with Ming Di, Black Square Editions, 2019; Black Ice, 2020, Black Spruce Press; Fetišas (The Fetish), Bazilisko ambasada, 2020; Shoelaces for Chagall, Selected Love Poems, bilingual English/German, Bübül Verlag, Autumn, 2021); Seasons At The Patch, 2023, Black Spruce Press, 2023; Alphabet of Dreams, Bazilisko ambasada, 2024. Keys received the Robert H. Winner Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America in 1992, and in 2005 a National Endowment For The Arts Literature Fellowship. He was a Senior Fulbright Research grantee for African-Brazilian studies, and is a member of the Lithuanian Writers’ Union and PEN. He authored a bi-monthly column, Letter From Vilnius: Eastern/Central Europe and Excursions Elsewhere for Poetry International, San Diego State University. He also translates from Portuguese. He is the Republic of Užupis’ World Poetry Ambassador, and Chevalier of the Order of the Silver Garlic Bullet of the Republic of Užupis.

(Photo by Elena Pipiraitė-Zimblienė)

It was heading, I thought, toward the rising sun when I got on, how many seconds, how many rising sun’s ago. On my way to her. Humming a tune, muttering a few syllables – dodewdoduepooshoo – hmmmn – teeteedah moo moo you too blue who stew stewed moo moo mooning along one no blew shoe toedue moomom, always changing but coming back to something like this and then interspersed with a man yah and no tame theme. When I concentrate I notice the possible me-me if I further break the train of syllables shuttling back and forth between voice box and visual screen. As it is, too many phonemes dance above my head like angels kneaded from gingerbread, transposed and transported, condemned to be cum me as the luckless companions of my journey. From frying pan to fire, bread and onions our communion. Trolleys aren’t buses or boats, and I wasn’t experienced as a driver or oarsman even then. Nor now. Trolleys, floppies, lollipops, trollops, the eye of the ego confuses them all. Back then she boasted a rotund bust maybe more natural than the moon, but I was after the sun. A man is a man sometimes, and sometimes only the summation of a man. I feel more like something I would like to call transposition. I am transposition. And I am transposing at all times. I’ve lost most of my hair, and these days I’m almost toothless. Back before before, my destiny was clearer, more familiar... ...I was a young man and now I’m an old woman with a moustache, though the occasional passenger often mistakes me for a huge baby – shriveled, no hair almost, no teeth to speak of, cunt-pink from birth and not from the chill on the trolley, and every now and then pissing all over myself. I was well-read. Of course, I can’t not be well-read now since I once was, but I can’t recall much of anything after the fire except running up the firebreak screaming for succor – dadew dadew done, and now I am here transposing. There’s no sense in getting off now, now that my ticket’s stamped: No Destination. A strange ticket, clear blank through and through. Not even a color like pink or blue. Just no destination etched there like a hologram – what does it mean, no destiny, no nation, a stateless culture, a petri-dished transposition of One. It’s like getting vaccinated or a birthmark or a tattoo – after it’s done you go with the flow. A trip is a trip. Each of us in our own cone of light. Volition is volition. You see, my movement and my mouthings(words some call them)remain independent of me. They go to the end of the tongue and then fog up my compact because I’m usually speaking to my compact, and of course I’m always transposing so they go to the end of the line, return to what seems the beginning – I know it’s the end because I always bump my head and sounds pop out when it jolts to a stop – over and over. Loop d’ loop, though where things stop and start gets increasingly arbitrary. I’ve come to believe that jolts can even happen at the beginning. For example, the life cycle of a turd – a jolt at the start and then it just dissolves in the plumbing or the rain, depending on the composition I suppose, or maybe even its preference. Maybe here is a case study with no destiny involved. Or maybe I am the unmoved movement that decides, if it happens to be my turd. Happens. Happens to be. To be. Be. Am. B. M? O’ how one could go on and on, transposing and transposing, such as transposition is want to do. Anyway, one’s destiny doesn’t really correlate with one’s destination. No reason to get off. Besides, I don’t have the dough to get on again as one usually needs to board such things, and even if I walked of my own free-will, I would probably follow the same route, predictably humming off key, brain-dead to any possible alternative, by-pass or highway, in a sort of surgically illuminated state of being. It’s conceivable – impossible to escape the vocabulary of beginnings and ends – they could throw me off – these ticket-checkers with eyeballs that beat like hearts pumped with steroids and bubblegum. If my ticket’s expired or if they think my destiny doesn’t correlate with my destination. Maybe it’s not a clear blank slate but a ticket-checker’s code in India ink. Maybe it’s only good to an end one time. Or to a beginning. Or till the trolley stops at one of the terminals. Or to the cinema. A side-show. Daniel’s den. Or maybe it’s good as long as I am – not am good, but am. Until I expire. Little do they know of transposition. Screw their ends and beginnings. There’s another beginning – am spelled backwards, ma. Wouldn’t want to be a born-again Xtian if that was the maw that waited me. I’m not much for the world anymore, as my mother used to say. When I got it, I got a whole roll. Rather silly since there’s no getting off the diving board Davy-Jones express now. Of course I was a young colt then, and now I’m an old mare, but I don’t think the ticket-tattooers know that – that this me is that me, or was that me, so confusing, and it can’t be part of the regulations. I mean I’m sure my me is not in the regulations. And the ticket-checker-takers’ ID ID can’t be in the regulations either, nor how to tattoo or ticket, how to punch it – standing up straight or bending over a little, smiling or frowning, smirking, or that deadpan or steroid-eyeball look. So if they’re not in the regulations and I’m not in the regulations then it doesn’t matter if I’m me transposing on the trolley or off, and it doesn’t matter if they’re on the trolley or off. It’s all generic, man. Out of control. Could be that they’re me and I’m them – “your ticket please” my them says to one of me. Or maybe to one of them. Maybe one of them started out as an old woman and ended up as a young colt retreating from the rising sun. To be truthful and boring, as I said before, what the beginning is, or the end, is hard to know at this point, and I prefer to think it irrelevant or even passé, a sophomoric conundrum, a lottery. As a student, I was quite urbane, raised practically in museums and brothels. Queer priests and bitches with clap and boots were as common as virgin marys on the dashboard of a taxi or violinists at receptions. As an old woman, I conjecture my roots were in the countryside, and damned if this isn’t the first or last time I’ve ever ridden on one of these things. This second family-tree’s all make-believe, but I’ve come to believe it. After all, everyone’s a product of the shenanigans of some country. I’m far-sighted. Real far-sighted. I don’t have glasses, and despite my earlier denial, I don’t know what color the ticket might be, or if additional data just wore off with my constant fingering or folding. Maybe it’s not a ticket – maybe it’s a diaphragm or a wad of dried-up bubblegum from under the seat when someone else sat here before me, playing with themselves like me. That’s a transposition subtext but let’s go on. I see detour signs off in the distance, and when we get up close I can’t read them. And then the detour is too close for me to know if we take it or not. It would be a lot better if we were going to take a detour if we took it before we came to it – then I would know where we were going, or at least a name – something like burg or haven, or polis or matrix or field or city dump. The rising sun is where I would get off if I know I’m there. But it always seems to be so far away, anemic like a communion wafer. Soon we loop into another direction, but not to the setting sun either – nothing works so smoothly as common sense would have it. My conjecture is that I could reach the rising sun via the setting sun, but it appears even the setting sun is out of the picture, and drowned. Once in awhile another passenger – and they are rare birds—asks me where I might be going. I seldom answer. I just look at them like I don’t understand or sometimes like they don’t understand – no comprende pal. Sometimes I just joke and say poppyland or Mecca or to Hell, or I just point to the lump of my breast under my blouse and say boom-Paradise. Speaking of breasts and paradises, food’s not a problem. Since I’ve been en route, I probably haven’t eaten anything except used chewing and bubblegum from under the seats that I swallow and don’t chew, hoping it’s bubblegum and maybe I’ll just blow off somewhere without any volition of my own. And sometimes there’s a moth or a magazine. It’s really no problem. I don’t move around much and so don’t cook many calories, and when I pass the gum it comes out almost whole and so I can use it again. The moths must disintegrate or something – or they’re absorbed and become the only real nutrients I get. Moths I grab mostly in the day when they’re sleeping, but don’t dare eat them till night when there’s less chance of being stigmatized. As for magazines, sometimes I just eat the food ads. Yes, every time it gets dark I count another day and mark it in my mind – I may look dumb or special but I can still do my numbers. It’s not strange being an old woman just as it wasn’t strange being a young stud of a passenger with my cock always trying to kamikaze through my pants – especially when I knew there was something in the wind and I was heading toward the rising sun. When I never got there, it was like I was dormant and the rising sun was the green cushioned dorm I never got to, guarded by some matronly goddess, and so I started servicing Jill by jacking off secretly under my coat, even sometimes daring to when another homeless bastard was sitting next to me. I would be nervous since I am by no means an exhibitionist. But then, over time, no one noticing or saying anything, I began to relax. I began to enjoy it in a less restrained fashion. After all, it is just another kind of transposing. The mechanics of it like doing my numbers. I can’t say that being less restrained let me enjoy it more, just more often. Because I soon noticed that if I was feeling restrained, then when I finally came I would spurt with a lot more pressure, and the feeling was more intense than when I was less restrained and maybe even lackadaisical. It was really nice when on rare occasions the trolley was completely full and someone would be forced to sit down next to me. Then I started to fantasize, man or woman, or even little children or crones. I even imagined golems or manikins or even a saint, maybe transposing like myself. The more macho the man or uglier the woman, the more difficult and challenging, and the harder I had to work at it. With children, it was easier since they were completely “off limits”, and in virtue of that, all the more exciting. The others didn’t fit into any regulations, and so the reaction was kind of neutral. I wasn’t a pervert or anything, with well-endowed women I could come sometimes in less than a minute, and then lick my fingers. There was a twisted hierarchy to it all. If a ticket-checker was sitting next to me, often I would bite my tongue when I came just to taste the blood I suppose, although it all seemed like a reflex action. If I had been asked to fill out a job application at that time, I would have been hard put to say whether I had more experience as a trolley rider, a conquistador, or a masturbator. It’s a qualitative, quantitative issue. Of course, I had spent more time riding in the trolley than I did jacking off. And I used to ride a bike a lot before that, humping the seat. But then someone who is a hired killer might spend a lot more time getting to his job than doing it. Well, I’m drifting off what I mean to be saying. There wasn’t even a transition. Transposing isn’t in this equation. I can remember when one moment I was a boring male, and then slap-bang I was a woman. Not an old woman with sagging, suckable, deflated breasts, but young enough with firm, prim, peachy breasts. Getting old took some time though I can’t count the days. They pass like seconds. Or should I say seconds pass like days and I still can’t count them, though I’ve tried. It’s all the same. It was some time into my journey. The trolley windows were all frosted over and I was the only passenger so I felt quite secure. There was, obviously, no one sitting next to me. It had been a long, long time, actually, since there had been another passenger, and I wasn’t sure if there was a driver but I didn’t really care because the trolley kept going more or less its own way, and then would turn around – like a perpetual motion machine, or turn on its axis like the earth if I may hazard such an egghead analogy. After all those years on board I could feel it better than I could see it. Like my piles. And anyway, the windows were frosted. Back to the matter at hand, I was so addicted to the titillation of jacking off underhandedly with someone sitting next to me, that I became quite annoyed and felt increasingly anxious and pent-up at being alone. An abandoned Job raving like Ahab, finally I began to fantasize like I did when I was a novice and just starting up: lesbian pin-ups in tandem; the hygiene teacher; the nun on the cover of a paperback by someone named Diderot; my older sister; myself in the mirror; lambs; my cock in the mirror; fractions of light; jailbait my own age with down on their legs; Lo; carp and corpses; the vacuum cleaner; and especially around Easter, my Savior. And so forth. Well, it was around Easter since the week before I had noticed some passengers painting Easter-eggs. So, I decided well, why not go it alone, Christ! When you’re underage, not the age of consent, a juvenile by law, I guess some things are permitted by the powers that be, but as I soon found out it wasn’t the case any longer. I stuck my hand down my pants, grabbed my stiff thing, and lo and behold, it detached itself, or was detached by…Can you imagine. No blood, no pain, but there it was foaming in my hand. I panicked. I was awaiting the lightning. The trolley had stopped as if on cue, and I just knew someone was about to board. Totally frightened, maybe even ashamed, years and years without any real food, I shoved the evidence in my mouth. Of course I feigned nonchalance when a young woman got on, quite bewitching, and sat next to me despite all of the empty seats. I was circumspect, shrewd, chewing carefully with my mouth closed, taking pains not to appear vulgar or even to give the impression that I might only be chewing gum, especially someone else’s gum from under the seat like some undereducated, working-class stiff. To make a long story short, it went down quick since after it had become detached, it had reduced to its dispassionate size, no more like the killer-kielbasa you might have pruriently imagined. Still, it hadn’t sunk in that I was no longer a man, and with this nymph-like creature next to me, I started to slip my hand down into my pants again from habit. Shocked, yes, I was shocked. Nothing. No spear to shake, nothing, but as cunning as I had become through the years and adversity, I quickly adapted to the new situation. I wiggled my litmus finger up groping for the G-spot, and soon experienced a new sensation, prodigiously more thrilling I decided – but instantly I was punished(by some Greek goddess no doubt)for having such a thought, and my finger, ring and all, detached itself inside my twat. That brought my turtledove days to an abrupt end. It seems to escape reality, I fell asleep or into a coma, and when I woke up the girl was gone. I returned to my emptiness, contemplating the cold, adjacent seat, the empty trolley, the endless ride. Quite a lot of time has passed since then. Really quite dull. No toilet on this trolley. No cock that counts. My twat plugged up with my finger. The worst part is that it’s not even a circle I’m transposing in – just a back and forth, a forth and back, or back and back, a forth and forth. Sometimes I think it’s an illusion, a joyless hayride. I’m not a Kepler, but I keep busy to avoid darker thoughts. According to my calculations, even when it’s pitch-dark or there’s a blizzard, the sun never sets. Though I’m not much one for cause-and-effect, the goose chasing the golden egg stuff, deduction and induction, I’m beginning to suspect it also never rises. Not to be sentimental, but look at me – how many seasons ago, on my way, out of tune, humming a young man’s song. Lots of women are getting on now. They all look pregnant. All of them. I wonder what would happen if one of them gave birth on the trolley. The baby wouldn’t have a ticket. What would the checker do. I’ll never have that problem now – I have my ticket – but it’s interesting. So many are standing. I should give up my seat.