Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Gay Test

Look at your fingernails.
Did you make a fist or
splay your fingers like a fan?

Hold your arms out, palms up.
Did your elbows touch
before your wrists?

Now: Skip across the room.
Stand on one foot.

Say boring.
Say fabulous.

Do you secretly believe
you are more beautiful
than most people?

When a man on the bus touches your knee,
do you want to say, “Don’t. Stop.”
Or “Don’t stop.”

Have you ever ended a sentence
with a proposition?

When someone says “boa”
do you see pink feathers,
or a big snake?

When someone yells
“Hey, faggot.”
Do you look?

4 comments:

Charles said...

Love this.

The ending—is complex.

Peter said...

Thanks Charlie. Yes I agree about the ending. It may have a bit of duende in it.
(Also, it might be mis-interpreted as homophobic, or internalized homophobia, at the very least?)

Charles said...

I took it as the poem making a sudden, unexpected turn toward the serious, the dangerous. Everything before this was so innocuous...it was a sudden jolt back to reality.

Steven D. Schroeder said...

I didn't interpret the ending that way.