Declaration :: : An Anti-Erasure
For the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated
from public life entirely—the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.
—Michael Knowles
When it becomes necessary to dissolve;
When we are disposed to suffer in bodies unfit;
Whenever any Form becomes establishment
of an Absolute; when Government will dictate
that Form should not be changed;
When bodies unusual, uncomfortable, fatigued
into compliance; when a candid world evinces
a design to reduce us under convulsions within;
When circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy constrain our bodies
to fall themselves by their Hands; when bodies marked
by every act eat out their substance;
whenever any Form refuses our consent;
whenever any Form constrains our bodies;
When it becomes necessary to dissolve;
We dissolve.
We have reminded;
we have appealed;
we have Petitioned for Redress;
we have warned.
We have abolished the Forms.
We have dissolved.
After such dissolutions our bodies became fit instruments.
We declare the causes that impel us. We refuse
absolute rule. We refuse patient sufferance.
We refuse to pass.
We refuse to compleat the works of death,
desolation, and tyranny.
When it becomes necessary to dissolve, we hold these truths:
That we are of immediate and pressing importance;
That we are, and of Right ought to be.
We declare we are, and of Right ought to be.
We are, and of Right ought to be.
• • •
Strangers to the Law
Around the time the sidewalks began to crumble into a fine, scaly dust—like that of moths’ wings—the man who wasn’t a man realized the Law no longer recognized them. The Law had scooped his own eyes out with a silver citrus spoon, but heard the footsteps of the man who wasn’t a man tinkling on the cobblestone street at the border of town and knew something was amiss. He hissed like a ready iron: Who goes there? Who are you? The name of the man who wasn’t a man had been stripped from their body, and so they replied, I am a stranger. This did not satisfy the Law. Where are you going? he probed. What is your business here? The man who wasn’t a man would not lie. I am going nowhere, they said. The Law, now close enough for them to smell his sulfurous breath, groped their genitals and chest, shivering with disgust. This is not in compliance, he fumed. You must be re-formed. With that, the Law set to his violent work, crushing and grinding the man who wasn’t a man into a brick, which he then added to the wall that enclosed the town. The wall, tall as it was—and made, they now noticed, entirely of strangers like themself—would let no one leave. The Law whistled as he continued his patrol, blindly self-satisfied. In response, the bricks began to sing, low at first, and then soaring and swooping all around him. And as the Law tried to swat their song from the air, an eclipse of moths flew out over his head, over his flailing arms, over the wall he had built, over the melodies he had no power over, and scattered into the uncertain expanse of sky.
• • •
Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They received their MFA from Alma College, and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Foglifter, Pithead Chapel, Pacifica Literary Review, and elsewhere. They are the author of the chapbook Bliss Road (Seven Kitchens Press, 2025).