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In this week's episode of the Get Lit Minute, your weekly poetry podcast, we spotlight the life and work of poet, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza. Her work has been featured in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016. Source

This episode includes a reading of her poem, \\u201cA Guide to Reading Trans Literature\\u201d. See more of her work in our Get Lit Anthology.

\\u201cA Guide to Reading Trans Literature\\u201d

We\\u2019re dying and we\\u2019re really sad.
We keep dying because trans women
are supposed to die.
This is sad.

I don\\u2019t have the words for my body
so I\\u2019ll say I\\u2019m a cloud
or a mountain
or something pretty that people enjoy
so if I die
people will be like \\u201cOh, that\\u2019s sad\\u201d.

Be sad about that.
It\\u2019s okay to be sad.
It is sad when people die.
It is sad when people want to die.

I sometimes want to die but I don\\u2019t!
I\\u2019m one of the lucky ones.
You can feel happy about that.
It\\u2019s okay to feel happy about that.

Now pretend this is very serious:

History doesn\\u2019t exist.
My body doesn\\u2019t exist.
There\\u2019s nothing left for you to be complicit in.

It\\u2019s okay for you to feel happy about that.

Now pretend I am crying
right in front of you,
opening that wound up just for you.

Now pretend you can feel my pain.

Now pretend something in you
has been moved, has been transformed.

Now pretend you are absolved.

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