SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 124
SINE QUA NON
Re-fabs, Re-configs, and Transcendings
Review of Chrysanthemum (Chris) Watkins’ The Drag Gospel of Queer Jesus
(Saturnalia Books)
Chris Watkins’ The Drag Gospel of Queer Jesus first impressed me when I read one of its
early poems, “Now Sissy that Walk (A Creation Story).” In the poem, the speaker reimagines
the Christian Biblical figure of Adam as Eve, a voluptuous drag queen who feels every bit
herself. God, tinkering as God does with a nascent universe, takes Adam and tucks him,
pads his hips, and tells him to wear heels no “shorter than five inches.” Thus, Eve emerges—
lips perfect, waist cinched, her breasts on full display. On the one hand, the poem’s fusion
of Christian myth with contemporary drag performance excited me because it disrupts
the heteronormativity of one of Genesis’ earliest stories. A big screw you, to put it more
colloquially, to codified gender norms. But what moved me most about the poem was its
tenderness, how Eve must work hard to “[stitch] together / the loose fabric of the soul /
and [create] a comely silhouette” for herself. God might give, but Eve herself has to work to
turn that gift into something dazzling. And so, in this way, the poem doesn’t seek to disrupt
ideology simply to tear apart the sacred but instead wittily suggests that making oneself in the
Divine’s true image is good, sometimes arduous, but ultimately soulful work.
As a whole collection, Drag Gospel dragifies (permit me this indulgence, reader) not only
the Bible and its figures, but also the Earth itself before it returns to a less-embellished look at
the speaker’s own history. In the prologue and first section, titled Born Naked, Watkins writes
poems that reinterpret Christian myth as drag performances, reimagine Mary as a scared,
queer woman, and critique gender norms from colonial American times to the present. Part
two of the collection, Queer Ecologies, focuses on the speaker’s imbrication with the earth,
specifically the flora and fauna of Florida. Landscapes most readers would consider harsh,
gator-infested swampscapes come alive through colorful birds and stately, sometimes spiritual
forests where the speaker takes refuge from a state hell-bent on legislating her erasure as a
queer and trans woman. In the final section, the poems use the speaker’s history of religious
indoctrination and shaming as fuel to show not grief, but resilience. Despite historical
violence (whether biblical, societal, or personal), the collection’s emphasis on reformulation
leaves readers with a sense of hope.
Watkins’ strength in this collection indeed hinges on her reformulations, but what I find
most invigorating is the way she incorporates both inherited and contemporary poetic forms
in this project. “The Sonnet in Drag,” for instance, showcases Watkins’ wit and facility with
older forms while simultaneously commenting on the way a highly stylized form like the
sonnet can be likened to a drag queen’s routine:
Who turns a look like hers? The highest tuck
you could have—you might say she’s enjambed
…
She struts around in five-inch heels and lines
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