A fundamental part of being queer is being erased, I explain at
the outset of my talk this basic premise requiring 5.7
seconds to sink into the minds of my delegation
At the nightmare board meeting that has derailed my dreams, I’m
dashing in cobalt suit, white pocket square, a humble
multi-tasker before a great glass boardroom, clicker in hand,
shoulder pads to the wind, I let it rip, my modest proposal:
STRAIGHT GAY CULTURE
Savior stories of access and entitlement everyone can love
It’s already here! I warble, juggling my wagers in perfect sync,
Big nonsense proclamations followed by primal screams
always get them to their feet,
I have in my possession the latest in a genre I call gauche rive
gauche: a new straight fantasy novel about dead white
lesbians written under lockdown while sunbathing in the south of
France,
My board members get it—guaranteed mainstream reviews!—but
they’re genuinely charmed by the true star of the author
photo, the poetess’s tiny background husband in swim trunks
near the sea,
Letters of support stream in from the usual best-sellers, To whom it may
concern: Our transphobic books feature exciting transgender
protagonists, more huzzahs from the board,
Ever tearful, never fearful, I grab my trophy and confess, I myself was
obliged to attend the transgender studies panel organized by
cis studies, so I ask, Does tour always mean tourism?
Rhetorical flourish before I walk them through the numbers, A
figure in Kevlar rolls in the coffee cart, which is how I know
I’m screwed,
Everyone gets shoved in a van at some point
and
gets
dropped
off
As the world turns gays lie awake
gagging on fake episodes the only time we cry
Nervously I apply a stick and tint
because I’m fabulous and I’m about to meet my maker!
Between argonauts and incels I leopard crawl her whereabouts
Windex squeaks on a secret
swaddled in her No Razzismo tote bag
Unmistakable alarm, is it not? So I twist
as in meme and freeze
“You are ideal and failure, sentiment and lure,” says my maker,
a distant relative of Pierre Louÿs, whose ghost stands just
beyond her on the shore, gripping his sun bleached conch over his
head, scrawled upon it: bed death is a lie
200 years later the bottle floats back, rolls of film inside sloshed in
gin, bitter outtakes from tar, from rent, from what I realize is
theirs and always has been
This is after after after
The fundament of our relations is soft
They creep over us like mist
But in the future when distance fails
gays awake softer still
Copyright © 2023 by Maxe Crandall. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 5, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.