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100% QUEER
I’m 100% Queer when I’m
fucking a man.
Yes, even when I’m on my back, legs spread
legal in all 50 states,
church-approved—
because I Chose to be there
That’s Chose with a
captial C
made possible by long
scrubbing at the daily mildew of assumptions:
men are easier to flirt with
dykes are cooler than straight women
hands count as sex with a woman but not a man.
Think about it….
I was 100% Queer when I
married a woman
with no state’s blessing on our union
and I will be 100% Queer when I do it the same way
with a man
I’m 100% Queer
when anyone hits on me
and I don’t have the comfort of saying
“Sorry, I don’t swing that way”
I have to say
no when I’m not interested
and yes when I am
and make a decision every time
working the hinges of openness
so they don’t get rusty
out of habit.
I’m 100% Queer because
I don’t think it’s a revolution
to be given the option of checking
one out of two
especially in ink
And I don’t care if you
stand on one edge of Kinsey scale all your life
—full six homo, honest hetero zero—
as long as you’re there because you like the view
and not because you’ve forgotten how to move.
I don’t even care if
you’re camped out in the hair-splitting middle
claiming you never notice gender at all
There’s a vast terrain around the names we know
It’s 3D
It’s unmapped
It’s inhabited
Wherever you are, wherever I am,
No still spot can claim the word Queer.
WHICH ONE'S
THE BOY?
Between us we make one
femme
She shaves her legs and pits
I tweeze the stray whiskers from my chin,
bleach between the eyebrows
When we dress up she goes for lipstick,
I for heels
Between us we make one
butch
She built our bed from scratch, carries my bags
I’m called on to capture wasps
and get them safely out of the kitchen
In her closet you’ll find men’s shirts
In my dresser, men’s underwear
Between us we make two
women
Falling into habits like soft couches
rolling out of them again an hour, a month,
a year later
constantly slipping between roles
sometimes in chorus-line unison
sometimes like relay runners
passing the gender baton
hair short, hair long
on top, underneath
until no one can remember who began where
and between us we share
one fit of laughter
at the spectators’ confusion
as we sail beyond
either/or
and neither.
Miriam Axel-Lute’s poetry has appeared in many journals, including Main
Street Rag, Paterson Literary Journal, and Dreamboat, and in the anthology
Touched By Eros. She was a finalist in the 2000 Allen Ginsburg Awards. She
has a chapbook, Souls Like Mockingbirds, which is available at
www.mjoy.org/poetry.html |