The Divine as Non-Binary

The Ambiguous Transpoetics of Three Trans, Genderfluid and Genderqueer Figures from Hindu Mythology

s/he around shiva’s neck is a ring of moonflowers. ardhanarishwara, part-man, part-woman, shiva & parvati are fused in the same body. a divine union. their third eye of liquid fire opens like a crimson mouth, from which      songs of wrath & serenity emerge. snakes   garland their one-breasted torso            just as the flowers do but brighter, more luminous, scales a pearly silver under the moon. the moon itself is mounted    on shiva-parvati’s head, the ganga crashing down to earth from their long, black hair  in a shining rush of cacophonic water                    that thunders like        the sky does before lightning. the river of life, the river that gives life. relentless. but shiva-parvati sit undisturbed, lost in the ecstasy  of meditation, of dhyan, the mirror-clear contemplation   of the universe. a constellation of thoughts as   distant & irrelevant to us as the galaxies spinning outwards from their joint mind. their loins are half-phallus & half-vulva, half-shisna & half-yoni, simultaneously conceiving & birthing      the world as we know it:           matter & energy                        particle & wave.   when I was a child, I felt    small in comparison, dwarfed by the enormity of this unified being, the masculine & the feminine rendered pointless by a beauty so immense that under its weight, cracks of want appeared in my psyche — I wanted this. I wanted to be neither, to be both. I wanted to be garlanded by snakes, tied to this mortal realm only by a bond as insubstantial as that necklace of flowers,                held here only by love & not by      any duty beyond that, any duty to shape or form, logic or illogic. I wanted to contemplate   & become the universe as they did. I wanted to sing & for my songs to become fire, for my dancing      to become destruction, for my flesh to glow   like a blood-red kiln & for sparks to glance off my skin        as it melted away, leaving only the bronze gleam of my spirit within:                         becoming nataraja       as I danced away the limitations of body & mind. let the humans keep me now. let them                                      try.   translations ardhanarishwara: half-woman and half-man dhyan: concentration, particularly in the context of meditation shisna: penis yoni: vagina nataraja: another name for Shiva, generally used to refer to his dancing form  …