Harold Norse says, “Poetry meant being a sissy and worse. A fairy. A friend of mine once asked me why all poets were fairies. Well, I answered, that’s because they can fly.”
By Tyler Raso
Queerness is not yet here ... We must strive ... to think and feel a then and there ... we must dream and enact ... other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.
—José Esteban Muñoz, “Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity”
As a poet and a faggot, I
have often been approached
by butterflies, their cursive
flight wading in and out
of my orbit until, at last,
they rest somewhere near
my hand like a semicolon.
As I write this, a butterfly
does just that, its one leg
raised like a tooth. As I write
this, the sun is green and
pupal, and I, as a poet
and a faggot, feel
the sun speaking to me
in code. As I write this,
my phone quakes with
a message I will read
when there is nothing left
to say. As a poet—and
a faggot—I always have
something to say. I always
have this thumb of smooth jade
in my coat pocket, numb
as a word, dull as
a place. At one point,
I collected coins, the ones
with green so coarse
the face was just a shape
beneath. As a poet, and
a faggot, the mystery
was the point. I have
an app that tells me when
to water my plants, to
trim their leaves. As a poet,
and a faggot, the trimming
reminds me that losing
can be a healing thing. Oh,
before I forget, as I write
this, my reflection burns
against my laptop screen,
its fingers chips of wood
becoming mulch. What I mean
is I look at this self half-made
behind the light. The butterfly
still here, like watercolors.
Its wings flexing like a lung.
As a poet, and a faggot,
I get it. There is always
somewhere else I need
to be.
