I.
A burning man walks through the city
unperturbed by the spittle
falling out of car windows like drizzle
II.
Once, yesteryear, a younger boy approached me
asked to see my genitals. I declined.
He walked away sounding like a brush fire
whispering uppity faggot under his breath.
III.
I pass shop windows, my scalp gleaming
like a signal flare. I look to my right
and find middle fingers raised in salute
to the fact I am wearing a turtleneck.
The sun hides its face in bosoms of clouds
and I am the only thing radiant for miles.
IV.
An old friend, roughneck, nail biter,
backhand-lifter, confesses he is bisexual.
He drives a lifted truck. His porch wears
a confederate flag like an ascot.
Someone calls him a word we both take
like the slash of a knife or torch to the skin.
No one regrets it more than me,
to have watched the word fall to the ground
limp as a dead bird, while my friend
adjusts his rings and pummels the mouth
that lifted the word off its tongue
not yet ready to let it fly true like an arrow.
V.
I was born here. I will die here:
in this word that I will not claim as mine
for it is not. It was always hatred’s.
VI.
1914. First recorded use. Abbreviated into fag.
From the Latin word fascis: a gathering of sticks.
Use: fagots (sissies) will be in drag at the ball tonight.
VII.
I will wear the word if it would fit
like a dress with a train long enough
to reach back through the centuries of pain
that arrives here to wed the present.
VIII.
I kiss a girl. I kiss a boy. I kiss the wind
until it sends the rain to drench me home
into this body still smoldering with want.
IX.
Middle school: I’m called a fag.
I am not sure I understood so I ask again
for the word I am called. Faggot.
Gay. Queer. Abomination on earth.
I quickly take the word in my clenched fist
crush it into my palm and dip
my knuckles into the boy’s face
as though through a mirror in which I am
finally allowed to see my soul.
X.
Violence is not always an appropriate response
to belittlement or chastisement.
It is, however, one of the only ways, growing up,
the men in my town were able to think.
I learn the language as though I invent it.
Every time a man casts the word out as though
a line on which to hook me,
I respond silently with the only words
he can truly grasp my thoughts:
right cross, left uppercut, fall and crash.
XI.
Ever since I learned masculinity defines itself
by what it cannot define itself through,
I have detested any man who does not understand
he has every right to be unsure
of what he’s told himself he is.
XII.
I want a world void of words that inflict
or infect or castrate or mutilate us.
But, so long as there are people against understanding
ignorance will be like gravel in a skinned knee.
XIII.
I still walk through town. I am on fire.
The world is on fire.
There are people like me burning alive for love.
And the rain cannot quench, nor can it speak for me.
Only this crackling of my bones will do.
Samuel J Fox is a queer poet and essayist living in the Southern US. He is poetry editor for Bending Genres LLC and appears in many online and print publications. You can find him in coffee shops, dilapidated places, and graveyards, depending. He tweets @samueljfox.
Twitter: @samueljfox
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