Book review: G. Gazelka, Bodies in Transition

by Richard Polt | Aug 11, 2025 | Book review | 0 comments

Cover illustration by Mitch Green

I’ve known Gene Gazelka through Instagram and the typosphere for several years now. He uses a Smith-Corona portable and a Royal standard to write fiction, poetry, and poetic snippets that get posted around town, making life a bit more interesting for those who may run into them. Gene is a trans man who’s been through a lot and turned it into words.

Last year Gene published Bodies in Transition, a collection of poems that each make me stop and reflect. Almost all seem autobiographical. Some are a bit cryptic, others tell the truth without adornment. Some have passages in prose, others make full use of line breaks and the arrangement of words on a page. Gene writes about love, sex, surgery, justice, and injustice.

If you lean left, or you’re not straight and cisgender, you’re more likely to empathize with these poems. If that doesn’t describe you, I still recommend this collection as a trip into the experience of someone unlike you. As Gene truly says, “they are worthy of love just as I am.”

Anyone who has passed through darkness can find resonance in a poem like this:

It’s not words you ask for, or

to be taken

Yours has been a life of

pain and you seek

care, to be seen,

to be appreciated,

to be re-wrapped

and re-gloved,

for your knuckles

are bloody

You do not have

to be the womb to

the world

It is okay to kiss

the sky when it is

at its darkest

Gene reminds us that

the body is a home and some are lucky

enough to walk safely in it

—while others are not. For them, it is precious to be acknowledged and welcomed as representatives of the gender they desire:

The first time

my name pronounced “Eugene”

from another person’s lips

lit me up

like a holiday festival

Why do so many people take pleasure in cruelty toward those who already feel so much pain? Why do some politicians choose to encourage this cruelty by scapegoating a small and endangered population? Why are so many so bent on reinforcing images of masculinity and femininity that boil down to silly stereotypes, such as the one that Gene quotes in a poem?

Boy: (n) a noise with dirt

on it

I read this line this morning. Later in the afternoon, while strolling through a thrift store, I saw its counterpart on a sign:

How tyrannical and how insecure to insist that girls can’t get dirty, boys can’t get glittery, or bodies can’t flow from one gender to another. Let’s let each individual struggle toward their own form of expression and desire. Gene makes the point with a metaphor that my readers should enjoy:

Each typewriter requires

a different stroke

One must be replaced with a lower

case L on my Royal and Smith-Corona

I have no exclamation point

You cannot see my emotions

Feel the rhythm

Jam

Adjust

Hear the clacking of the keys

Connect to the physical

There is the ink,