David Brennan
Gender is fascinatingly fluid and stubbornly stable. My work has benefited from considering the "otherness" of gender; specifically, what it is that I am not and what it is we all share.
When I Knew
Scones and coffee cooling
on the tabletop, blustering
snowflakes curling around
tree and invisible outside
suspended entities, an almost
storm surrounding Queer
and Tiff, last ones left
at breakfast. “When I knew?”
Queer is saying, casting
back for the trout of memory,
the barb long ago unsnarled
from its lip and the fish released;
Queer feels a sweet protectiveness
toward this sort-of niece
whom everyone knows has been sleeping
with the girl across the street.
“Dang, Tiff, I don’t know, I just,
you know, knew.” Tiffany nods
and sucks a dreadlock, an
off-putting habit, though it
does give her mouth a cute-
ish pout, thinks Queer, who is
recalling the day of realization,
the slack sails of sorrow, the bodily
embargo, Sahara
of voices, the nobody
to confide in—
“You know, I’ve been—” Tiff says,
dangling the unsaid
over a bottomless
hope— “Go get her, Tiger,”
is Queer’s answer, catching
Tiff’s hand in the hook
of a warm cheer, a remembrance
that can be caught and kept.
David Brennan's first book of poetry, The White Visitation, is forthcoming from BlazeVOX Books. His work has appeared in Action Yes, Pank, H_NGM_N, Parthenon West Review, Beeswax and elsewhere. He lives and teaches in Virginia.