Ben Fisher (Greensboro, NC)
No fats
No femmes
Masculinity above all else
I remember him saying,
“I want to date a man.
I have no respect for drag queens.”
Let’s be clear
The sissies and the fairies
Are the ones being beaten down
Down in the streets
These are the brave ones
Your toned Planet Fitness body
Might be delectable
You might not sashay
Like the queer coquettes
But this won’t save you
It won’t endear you
To the folks who believe
That your identity is a fad, a trend, a lifestyle
Passing for straight is a farce
Invisibility is not liberating
We the queers
We believe we are more highly evolved
But we absorb and inculcate
Norms, binaries, conventions
As readily as any other
Heed Jimmy Baldwin’s warning:
“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth
I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed,
before I was able to walk
on the Earth as though
I had the right to be here.”
Will we vomit or will we simply regurgitate…
All of the filth
That causes us shame
That tells us to hate “fat” bodies
To hate femininity
Don’t all of us have a right to be here?