The Tautology of Body

The illness and isness
The pain and the pleasure
The birth and the death
The growth and the loss
The sick and the healed

How one cannot exist without the other

Mind and bone
Brain and feeling
Memory and forgetting
Skin and blood
Heart and soul

The paradox of it

Space and limitation
Story and emotion
Synapse and desire
Wound and scar
Planet and star

How gender fits into everything

Sex and procreation
Seduction and devotion
Genitals and want
Irigaray and Kant
Master and slave

The work of it

Sweat and labor
Protein and fiber
Dance and rhythm
Sink and swim
Them, her, him

How my fits in

No mother without birth
No matter without earth
No food without roots
No kiss without lips
No sway without hips

The you of it

Your was and death
Your love and flesh
Your time and gone
Your want and devotion
Your Leda and swan
Your mouth and kiss

The us of it

Cassie Premo Steele's newest book is the novel, Beaver Girl, chosen as the 2024 One Book, One Community selection for the City of Columbia, South Carolina, and sponsored by the Jasper Project, One Columbia for Arts and Culture, and All Good Books. An environmental poet, novelist, and essayist, her writing focuses on the themes of trauma, healing, creativity, and mindfulness, and she teaches classes on these themes online and in person. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. The author of 18 books, including 3 novels and 7 books of poetry, her poetry has won many awards and been nominated 8 times for the Pushcart Prize. She writes a monthly column for The Post and Courier's Free Times, "Still Here," highlighting the wild and rural places in South Carolina, where she lives with her wife and their intergenerational queer family.