Category: Uncategorized

Part I
I had a dream last night,
In which I fell for a man,
His smooth hair, talk, touch.
Even in my hallucination though,
I knew it was wrong.

In the day,
Being a lesbian is so integral
To my identity.

And here I am again,
Sixteen,
Laying in my bed,
Questioning,
Texting my friends,
How do you know?
No friends this time

Diagnostic terms surface,
Compulsory heterosexuality,
Hypothetical Attraction,
Heteropessimism,
Our logical, scientific approach,
To questions relating to the soul.

My head spirals,
I reread the masterdoc,
I return to the quizzes,
I scroll though the Wikis
Every queer kid’s universal experience.
And again my gender comes into question.

Do I love him?
Do I want to be him?
Do I want to be at all?

I’m still not sure.

Will I ever be sure?
Or is this my existence forever,
A confused kid,
Going in circles,
Coming out again
And again
And again,
Until I die.

Part II
They/them
In which,
The masculine is not a man,
And the feminine is not a lady,
Rather.
Something in between,
Or outside completely.
Singular or plural,
Both can be true.

Lesbian
A non-man,
Who loves other non-men.
I am not a man,
And I do not love men.

Dreams are not reflective,
Of real life.
They can deceive, bewilder, upset.
I cannot let,
A false hallucination
Cause me anguish.

I am not confused.
I am not a man,
I am not a woman,
But something marvelous and in-between.

I hate men.
Well, I don’t hate them
For real.
I am a man, and
I love myself,
So of course I don’t hate men.
But for lack of better words:
I hate men.

It’s a little confusing,
For myself even. A queer man
Who hates men? Huh?
I don’t hate men
When I look in the mirror,
Nor did I hate men
When I lost my virginity,
Spending over an hour
Taking a man I met that night
To Poundtown.

I did hate men
When I heard from my friend
That he was going to invite me over
To “break things off” with me,
Instead of hearing it from him
The night before he had tried
to start talking to start talking again
When he saw me, she and her boyfriend
Eating lunch.

I try to hate men,
But when he called me
A year after our hookup
Asking if he could stay the night,
My dumbass said
Sure.
I treated him like I would any other friend,
It was obvious he only called
Because he needed
Somewhere to stay for the night.

I hate how comfortable I was
On his chest. My walls of protection
Were gone, and I was flushed to the wall
As big spoon, wishing that there was
Room for Jesus. Wishing
That next time I’m put in
A similar situation,
I’ve grown enough as a person
to not even answer the phone
When a man calls. Cuz
I hate men.

At the kitchen table he drinks coffee,
eats three Biscottis, a 1954 red convertible
driving off the page and out
of our house. I’m spacey

and ask if we can drive to Neptune.
It’s so bleak and refreshing. He says
he’s in the mood for the seashore.
I don’t like driving so we head
to the Delaware shore, stopping first
at a Dairy Queen for large dipped cones.
We kiss after eating them,

getting our beards sticky. Our white beards—
the years speed faster than
this dream car. We watch paragliders
hover over waves. Then back
to our kitchen, our cat, the magazine
still open, the next trip
a page away.

In the back pew during Sunday mass, I held the hand of my lover.
Our fingers interlocked as we shared a book and read the hymns and gospel passages
together.
Voices melting into a single sound of worship and praise.
Singing His name into every nook of the church, only echoes of a chattering congregation
remained.
One must be imagining a tall, rugged man next to me.
Towering over me with all his privilege and power struggles.
Yet, my lover is shaped like the curve of the earth.
Her eyes reflect the rapid rise and fall of the oceans tide.
You wouldn’t guess it from the look of dark brown, but her original hair color is dirty blonde.
Like hay in the loft of baby Jesus, delicate and soft.
How lucky I am to have a lover who embodies the beauty of God’s creation.
The love of Christ Himself as she wraps her arms around my waist and holds me tight.
More secure in her embrace than any home I’ve ever known.
Her gentle touch sent a warmth that spread throughout my entire body.
Assured me that despite the glacial wasteland that is grief, she’d be there as the sun who kept
me safe.
I saw a woman’s head turn to us a few times.
Serpents and Bible passages flooded her eyes as I wondered if I even belonged in God’s
kingdom.
For I cannot change this part of myself.
If the heart is a compass then mine must be defective.
It’s never pointed towards a single gender, or the desire of someone else’s flesh.
My compass has only pointed me towards love.
And if my compass is wired to search for love, she is my final destination.
My home.
Some may say we are impure.
Two wicked lost souls in a world of sexual immorality.
For us to lie in the same bed is an abomination, as they say.
But they don’t see the way she comforts me from my nightmares.
How she sees the damaged, traumatized, broken me,
and still gives me so much love you’d think she painted the sky for me.
If you are to tell me that we are lustful creatures who will never understand true love,
I will tell you to rip our skins off and take the bed away.
If our sexes suddenly melted away, and all we had were our skeletons- I’d worship every
vertebrae.
Trace the outline of her spine.
Kiss the aching joints and muscles.
If you say we are to be stoned for homosexuality, I would dare you to take the bones from our
frame.
Until all that’s left are two wandering spirits.
I would find new things to love about her everyday, even if I could never feel her touch again.
And if that still doesn’t convince you that our love is real- I’d ask you to take my life.
Throw me to the flames.
Whip out your sticks and stones.
Rebuke me in the name of the savior whom I also love.
Just spare her beautiful heart.
If all we were faded away, I’d still give my life for her stardust to carry on.
All I’d hope is that even as a speck of light, she’d remember the promise I made to her.
That I’d always be hers.
To me, she is the symphony of nature’s finest beauty.
Even though my religion, I am a cacophony of all the bitter ingredients a person can be born
with.
If I could change, truly change, being queer.
If I could overcome my pansexuality.
Would I?
Yes.
But to me, she is the exception.
Take my lungs, take my blood, take the hundreds of prayers I’ve recited at night begging for
forgiveness.
Just please don’t take my girl from me.
For she is a reminder of what Christianity is all about- love.
If I am an oxymoron, may it teach you to show compassion.
To wash feet instead of casting stones.
To have a heart full of kindness and not a snake tongue reciting clobber passages.
To love the way Jesus did- everyone included

Sitting on the hard-curved cement frost covered bench,
with etched antique design,
my mind wanders.
December is a fuzzy month.
Chill penetrates my dry cracked skin,
pierces brittle bones and infiltrates the marrow,
when my blood freezes solid.
December is a cold and heartless month.
It was a year and a day,
or close enough.
My memory is fuzzy in cold December.
Mom fell after Thanksgiving weekend.
A mass in her lungs;
tests showed it spread,
like an intricate spider web,
through her brain, and
left a beauty mark on her spine.
In the same hospital,
a year and a day later,
or close enough,
my memory is fuzzy in cold December,
Pam had a mass in her lungs.
Tests revealed,
it covered her brain like a Belgian lace,
sleeping cap, and
left a dark smudge on her spine.
December is a cold and heartless month.
When icicle tears drip on my cheeks,
forming rivers and tributaries,
sliding off the cliff of my chin.
Wrinkled map of my brain,
full of detours and dead ends.
My memory is fuzzy in cold December.
Quietly wrapped in thick white chenille robe
tightly knotted,
a fantasy faux hug of earlier times,
sipping hot black tea, alone
creating a thaw
moisturizing the marrow,
smoothing the map,
looking for alternate routes to Spring,
when December becomes a warm memory,
Sitting on curved cement garden bench etched with antique design.

I write a lot about intimacy. I write about my understanding of it. Using cannibalism and feasting as metaphors for sex. About bruises and teeth as symbols of love. Of fighting and commitment, all things both cruel and kind. But what I don’t write about, is the empty echoes of shuddering starvation that comes from years of neglect. Craving and aching for touch, only able to seek a mere fraction of feeling from family and friends. I am celibacy and disgusting longing made flesh. Love given form and family. I am Agape, made from the sweetness of Aphrodite, blood and foam. Each one, a thing that slips always out of touch, a fragment of memories and fondness. |

I am the voyeur that watches. Hidden in the corner of the house, half covered by wallflowers and wind-faded wishes. Dandelion hands reaching for my own version of the sun and always stopping short. Watching on at scenes of intimacy, constantly grabbing the remote and rewinding before the moment can end. An ever-desperate loop of time and loss. Sun sets and cloud hidden lies. My skin prickling with goosebumps. A rash of allergy and need. I am burning in an empty house, having long lost the keys. |

I am the knowledge and the history of sex, unwilling to begin such a resentful dance again. Things learnt and lost through experience and pages I hate. I hate sex, I hate touch. The longing and anxiety that hangs behind each movement. The atoms that haunt the spaces previously held. And yet, I still crave, with every drop in my human body. Each pull of desire drawn from my breath-strangled chest. I find myself repulsed, even as I creep closer to that
ever-living edge. |

Voice Over: Val Cole

POEM:

Holy water smells like fresh herbs
or maybe it was the older women in the back pews
with the flower laced hats, and rosemary scented skin.
Skin so thin, the stained glass saints
stained the paper thin veins.
I didn’t like church much as a child
it reminded me of death,
and I didn’t like heaven much,
eternity sounded too endless for any curiosity to live there.
And what about the tigers?
Would I see tigers in heaven?
I heard a poem once about a tiger
who lived in a forest
ate belladonna
flossed his teeth with wolfsbane
taunted death in a game of catch and release.
And if God made the tiger
tigers must somehow be immortal too.
The young priest swung a golden thurible
past the elderly ladies in the back pews,
chanting over the burning ash of frankincense.
His monotone throat bass commenced a parade
and the downpour of eternal happiness
(without the promise of death)
marched in my mind.
What is eternity anyways to a child?
A perpetual summer dipped in delicious fields of technicolor tiger lillies.
I want to stay where lavender dies
in a place tigers are natural born killers
licking their cubs with chunks of meat between their God made teeth,
where in the back pews childhood philosophies dissolve in colors of glass saints.

It feels Illegal.
Feels like a trick.
Mother nature is rediscovering herself
And that means Summer is fair game.

Or maybe Summer and Winter
Are our Romeo and Juliet.
Divided by Spring and Fall
They can never touch.

Maybe snow in June isn’t so bad
When you think of it like that.
I’m deciding to take it as a sign
That nothing is really impossible.

Maybe someday I’ll cross seasons
To reach someone too.
My hand will stretch over months
And clasp the other, waiting.

If Winter loves Summer
They must not have any fear
Of Fall’s happy dagger
Or Spring’s sleeping draught.

tell a swan to stay put
then watch her rush to a river
listen to her wings
sputter against the water

call out her name
‘miss swan’
& watch her surge further away
than fingers can sink into skin

have a picnic on the mudflat
& call her over for tea
bring plenty of reeds
to bind feet to your mat

send the swan letters –
not to the canal –
to somewhere else
in the ether

if there is no response
–fret not –
write back on her behalf
& read it to yourself

then at the first chance you get
wring her long neck
feathers soft in tight hands
keep eyes squeezed shut

preserve the swan as glass
& hold the stillness each night
flatten her to window
so light casts her on your bed

don’t be surprised
to look out your boat
& see her swanning
in the melts of sun

her white feather coat
is no longer locked up –
it glimmers on the water –
she’s gone! she’s gone!

Face front to the wind.
I cannot relax I threw up this morning I
Find something foreign in this gray air.

It was the bird I had skirt
the grass that didn’t colour my pants

Ten minutes
a robin pluming its feathers

the wind’s at
my back
my inhale

my head’s heavy the rest of me light.
I did not sleep last night I do not now

The River dizzies me,
bigger than I
could ever know
More moving than I
Ever

tall, from days of rain I worry
the rock I sit upon will float off
I say
they don’t fall that fast
I hope