"Hear my Voice" Original Poem for Penn State TDOR 2024.

I wrote and read this for Penn State's Transgender Day of Remembrance- Nov 15, 2024.  The you tube video is my recording of it ( Listen HERE) .  In two places, I spelled sentences out phonetically to aid in my pronunciation.  (This is my reading copy)

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Hear My Voice

Sophie Kandler, TDOR 2024

 

TRIGGER WARNINGS: VIOLENCE, MURDER, SUICIDE 

 

Four hundred eleven killed worldwide in the past year.  Four hundred eleven names.   

Sixty-nine dead here in the US.  Not a record- 73 were killed in 2022. 

Sixty-nine names. Sixty-nine lives.  Sixty-nine stories.  Sixty-nine endings. 

 

My name is Righteous Torrence Hill, but my friends call me Chevy.   

I ran an Atlanta salon where black LGBTQ people could feel safe and be themselves.   

I was 35 in March when my freeloading cousin shot me in front of my home. 

He has yet to be found by the police. 

Hear my voice. 

 

I’m Kitty Monroe, a Latina transgender woman from Phoenix, Arizona.   

I was the sole caregiver for my infirm mother from Mexico, and now I’m gone.  

How? I was 43 when on New Years Day 2024, I was chased by a man and woman, and the man kept beating me on the back with a gun until I collapsed.   

He then got into his pickup truck and ran over me.  I was then accidentally hit by another car.   

Neither the couple nor the other driver, who fled the scene, have ever been identified.   

The police and press misgendered and dead named me.   

Escucha mi voz.  (EssKOOCHah me vohs.)   

Hear my voice.  

 

My name is Serenity Birdsong.   

I was 21 when I killed myself in the Middle Tennessee State University Library on October 28.  

 Friends said I had the ability to light up a room.     

I wrote a poem once that contained the lines: 

But all in all, that which I hope most 

Is to spend time with those I love before I’m a ghost. 

I had no close family- just chosen family. 

Not enough.  Not enough. 

Hear my voice. 

 

Call me Joan.  You may have heard of me.   

Back in 1431, I was burned at the stake three times until my body was ash.   

They wanted to charge me with 70 crimes, then 12, but the only one they could convict me on was crossdressing.   

While the church has since apologized and tried to make amends, I’m still just as dead. 

My ashes drifted away in the river.  I was only 19. 

Some things never change.  

Entends ma Voix (EEcoot ma vwah.)  Hear my voice. 

 

I have no name.   

Maybe I just disappeared into homelessness and died in a tenement, unidentified.   

Maybe I found more comfort stepping out into traffic than from my parents who rejected me. 

Maybe I was murdered, and my bones still molder in a shallow grave somewhere.  

Or maybe they found me, but the police didn’t bother to look for my killer.   

After all, what’s another dead prostitute anyway? 

Maybe I was found, but deadnamed and my truth never told.   

Not a name- just a statistic.   

I am a number cited by advocates and scholars.   

But once I lived, loved, and had dreams- like you.   

And like you, I am a story waiting to be told. 

 

Where’s your voice?