Day 18: "Trans-" by Rita Dove

For Day 18 of 30 Days of The Five-Two, another of the poems I turned up searching "crime" at the Academy of American Poets website.

Rita Dove's 2015 poem "Trans-" clearly alludes to gender issues. Not only have these issues rightly challenged the law, but the poem also features the image of the moon, the long association of night and crime.

The first stanza:

The moon is in doubt
over whether to be
a man or a woman.

and the third:

He’s belligerent. She’s in a funk.
When he fades, the world teeters.
When she burgeons, crime blossoms.

Indeed the poem is about our most uncertain times, our times of transition.

—Gerald So