Lion Witch and the Wardrobe fan art by http://dreamchasingwindie.deviantart.com/
HILLARY KOBERNICK
How Queer
a ghazal
In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Lucy, the youngest, in confusion says, “How queer.”
I am seven and will now and forever
hear a soprano British innocence when I hear “queer.”
My fingers crave curious, tactile, smelling the soaps
scraping sand and metal and poison ivy—how queer.
For the feeling it would produce on skin.
You say, in your apartment, “…since you’re not queer.
Are you?” I say “Am I?” I’ve never
touched a woman’s skin, like a queer
never been curious if desire to touch
is the same as touch, if desire to queer
is a decision like jumping off a tightrope
in the middle of Niagara Falls. “How queer,”
the British reporters say. “What a public suicide.”
I don’t suicide in public. I’m not that queer.
I don’t say only, either, I only eye women
with the desire of knowing, how queer,
of desiring to discover what I already
know she is and feels. “Are you queer?”
No one has ever asked before, how queer.
Lucy crawls into the wardrobe: how very queer.
How Queer
a ghazal
In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Lucy, the youngest, in confusion says, “How queer.”
I am seven and will now and forever
hear a soprano British innocence when I hear “queer.”
My fingers crave curious, tactile, smelling the soaps
scraping sand and metal and poison ivy—how queer.
For the feeling it would produce on skin.
You say, in your apartment, “…since you’re not queer.
Are you?” I say “Am I?” I’ve never
touched a woman’s skin, like a queer
never been curious if desire to touch
is the same as touch, if desire to queer
is a decision like jumping off a tightrope
in the middle of Niagara Falls. “How queer,”
the British reporters say. “What a public suicide.”
I don’t suicide in public. I’m not that queer.
I don’t say only, either, I only eye women
with the desire of knowing, how queer,
of desiring to discover what I already
know she is and feels. “Are you queer?”
No one has ever asked before, how queer.
Lucy crawls into the wardrobe: how very queer.
Walking South
The pollen is bad.
The traffic is bad.
The Japanese food is also bad.
Once in a meeting I say
the one with the guns and the zombies and the apocalypse.
Two people interrupt to share stories
about being extras. Phones,
passed clockwise around the table.
Agenda dismissed, this is Hollywood
coming to our front porches
where we still sit most nights of the week
with the TV calling to us through the closed window.
Closed. The heat is bad.
At a gas station, he spits,
emphasis on the y’all.
Think they can buy us.
Think they can make us talk north
if they Hollywood us walking south.
Walking Dead. By God, not me.
Most zombie stories take place in the South.
Something about grotesque. Something
about the smelly kid with bad grades.
The humidity is also bad.
We walk live, he said.
If Hollywood ever come here,
I’ll bust a bullet in its ass.
Show ‘em they can’t buy us.
Living or dead.
Retell us to ourselves
til all our water coolers gossip:
where the cast ate
or who got to crawl out
of the Chattahoochee
four times, undead.
The pollen is bad.
The traffic is bad.
The Japanese food is also bad.
Once in a meeting I say
the one with the guns and the zombies and the apocalypse.
Two people interrupt to share stories
about being extras. Phones,
passed clockwise around the table.
Agenda dismissed, this is Hollywood
coming to our front porches
where we still sit most nights of the week
with the TV calling to us through the closed window.
Closed. The heat is bad.
At a gas station, he spits,
emphasis on the y’all.
Think they can buy us.
Think they can make us talk north
if they Hollywood us walking south.
Walking Dead. By God, not me.
Most zombie stories take place in the South.
Something about grotesque. Something
about the smelly kid with bad grades.
The humidity is also bad.
We walk live, he said.
If Hollywood ever come here,
I’ll bust a bullet in its ass.
Show ‘em they can’t buy us.
Living or dead.
Retell us to ourselves
til all our water coolers gossip:
where the cast ate
or who got to crawl out
of the Chattahoochee
four times, undead.
Hillary Kobernick is a three-time member of the Art Amok! Slam Team and member of the 2014 Mental Graffiti Slam Team. She holds a Master's of Divinity degree from Emory University, meaning that she has, in fact, mastered the Divine. She divides her time between home and places like home. Her work has appeared in literary magazines in the U.S. and Canada, including Paper Nautilus, Third Wednesday, and decomP. Her work can always be found at http://hillarykobernickpoetry.tumblr.com/