Poetry Suite by Caroline Earleywine
“Tis the season to be
proud, to trade our silent nights
for this holy loud.”
Halloween is the Queer Christmas
We decorate ourselves instead of a tree.
Put lights behind pumpkins’ twinkling smiles,
the garland and bows on us, not a mantle. Our Santa
is Marsha P. Johnson or Laverne Cox or Lena Waithe
or Freddie Mercury or anyone who gave us the gift
of their bold, donned a stage in their gay apparel
and gave us permission to do the same.
No awkward family dinners performing normalcy –
just candy and a chance to be
someone else, or more ourselves,
the truth called costume
for the night.
We sing our carols at the altar
of a karaoke machine: RENT and Cher,
rounds of Time Warp and Monster Mash, a choir
of skeletons and ghosts and zombies,
all so very alive.
Tis the season to be
proud, to trade our silent nights
for this holy loud.
+++
Ode to the Word Lesbian
They say you take up too much space in the mouth,
all those awkward syllables fighting to be
pronounced – the heavy L, the way the tongue must
meet teeth to birth you.
I once took you out of a slide about
Audre Lorde because my students’ laughter
at your mention was so disruptive: Black,
lesbian, mother, warrior, poet. I recited her quote
about silence, the one that ends
it’s better to speak, and ignored
the irony of my censorship. Lesbian, often rejected
for sounding clinical, your sound more like a diagnosis
or medication with a slew of undesirable side effects –
in 1925, you were a noun that meant the female
equivalent of a sodomite, an inversion.
When I was 13 and growth-spurted above my
classmates, a well-meaning man came up to us
in the grocery store and told my father, Someday
a tall man is going to come and take her away from
you. How could he ever
have imagined you?
The third section of your definition reads: erotic;
sensual, as if you are x-rated, a word that must
be whispered, much too shameful to be said
in broad daylight, porn shoved
under the mattress.
In high school, a boy told me the locker room
was littered with rumors that I was a lesbian.
The baseball team decided it was hot, okay as
long as you looked like a boy could still insert
himself in the fantasy.
I have to mention your mother-
land, Lesbos, surrounded by salt-slick
water with Sapho and her anguished
love poems and don’t we all live
there, or wish we did? An island
of women who wear crowns of mouths
that don’t know how to quiet, who damn
the uncomfortable, who owe men nothing,
who own their desire.
+++
On the Drive Home from the Transgender
Day of Visibility Celebration, We Pull Over
A bird screams
in the empty
parking lot.
My wife tells me
she’s a killdeer,
birds that have
had to adapt
to civilization,
their ground nests
in places like this –
the smallest scrap
of green in a sea
of asphalt.
They are not
predatory,
toothpick legs
and beaks
all so breakable.
They protect
their nests
by pretending
to have a broken
wing, their screams
a siren that lures
danger away.
After I’d pulled
my wife away
from the men
throwing punches
on the state capitol
steps, we circled
the podium,
the smallest island
of queers, the air
around us heavy
with hate, red
hats puncturing
the sky. Our leader
told us Don’t
engage, said
Look inward,
at each other.
So we fought
back tears
and sang,
got louder when
one of us broke
down and could
not speak. I held
my love’s hand
like a lifeboat.
I could pass
as these men’s
sisters or wives,
but here I am
so visible.
So many
in our circle
have no choice
but to be seen,
every walk
down the street
filled with
potential
predators.
My wife just
came out at work
as non-binary
last week.
With her
short hair
and boyish
clothes, she
looks like
so much
of what these
men hate,
and I want
so badly to
protect her.
In the empty
parking lot,
this bird
keeps
screaming.
I wonder
what danger
she sees.
+++
Femme Invisibility
At the store I try
on lipstick. The pink
shade floats in the shape
of my mouth, suspended silent
in the middle of the aisle.
The waiter brings two separate
checks to the table, overlooks
our still moving forks, assumes
we dined and dashed.
At the family reunion, my dad
introduces us as roommates, friends,
then vaguely gestures at the place
where we once stood.
Sometimes I disappear, but
on the car ride home
you reach for my hand,
your thumb grazing across
my palm and the car fills
with light. I am so seen
I glow.
+++
Header image courtesy of Bo Bartlett. To view more of his work, visit his site here.