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Remember the Boys

chucking rocks at the wasps’ nest,
their gathered hum then sudden sting
at the nape of my neck. Oh, how I paid—
still pay—for the recklessness
of boys. Little Bretts. Little Jeffs.
Little knives to my breast.
How lucky they were to never
be held down, to never see
their voices crawl the air like fire!

How desperately I yearned to be them,
to storm the halls in macho gospel:
matching blue jackets, blood-filled
posture and made-you-flinch.
How different would I be,
how much bigger, if I had been
given room enough to be
a country's golden terror?

Rachel McKibbens is the author of blud (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), Into the Dark & Emptying Field (Small Doggies Press, 2013) and Pink Elephant (Cypher Books, 2009).

About Rachel McKibbens

Themes

About this Poem

“I wrote this poem a few months after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s stunning testimony about Brett Kavanaugh. Her story affected me deeply, and Kavanaugh’s response to it reminded me of an incident in high school involving a star football player I confronted on behalf of a young woman he had harmed. So much of my youth was wasted on wishing I’d been born a boy. I believed, for too long, that femininity was synonymous with victimhood. I’m grateful to have evolved from that mindset.”
—Rachel McKibbens

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Mentor

^{“death cannot harm me

            more than you have harmed me,

            my beloved life.”

            —Louise Glück}

I tell my daughter first, because her knowing
forces it to become true. I have to leave dad.

Rachel McKibbens

2023

Minneapolipstick

1. 
 

Santa Ana, California,
 
3 a.m. in my cousin’s basement,
 
lights out, television volume spun low.

We are huddled around the screen,

a small congregation of forgotten children,

brown faces illuminated by 

a five-foot-two Black man,
 
decked out in lace, eyeliner, Spandex 

and the gutsiest high-heeled boots 

big enough to fit only a mannequin.

 
This Minnesota royalty freaks and splits his body biblical.

Throat raw with screeching doves, he pirouettes
 
with his truest love: a pale pawn shop guitar
 
we daydream of buying some day

with our lunch money. 

 
2. 

 
1984.

Rachel McKibbens

2018

Across the Street from the Whitmore Home for Girls, 1949

The Mad Girls climb the wet hill,
breathe the sharp air through sick-green lungs.
The Wildest One wanders off like an old cow
and finds a steaming breast inside a footprint in the snow.
She slips it into her glove, holds it close like a darling.

At night, she suckles the lavender tit, still warm
in her hard little hands. She drapes it over her heart—
the closest she will ever come to a Woman Thing.

Rachel McKibbens

2016

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Remember the Boys

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