JULIE WEISS

CW – homophobia and suicidal thoughts (“Outbound”)

Outbound

---

If I hadn’t noticed the queer couple
making out on the other side, I might have
tumbled into the gap like a half-crumpled
gum wrapper caught in the gust

of an incoming train. In dreams so real
they wore the voice of premonition,
I felt the press of tracks on my back,
arched into them as if undulating beneath

the ghost of a lover. How many relationships
had I hung by the throat for fear of scorn?
Of rejection? How long until my parents
discovered the faces I´ve kissed floating

in my cereal bowl? The spilled water
altering into the shape of a woman?
Nights on the sly, slinking past the station
I visualized the train, our bellies rubbing,

metal against skin, metal shaving my body,
the whole of my life reduced to flakes
whirling in the rumble. I tried to lay my mind
in the hollow between my lover´s breasts

where I often wept, unsure how a teardrop
could summon enough strength to contain
such swells of emotion. I tried to undress
my memory, not in the way of foreplay—

layer after layer disappearing into the dance
of shadows cast by the sugar maple outside
her bedroom—but with one sharp tug,
all those quips about dykes, fags, and other

undesirables; all those threats: “If you ever…”
bunched about my feet. If only I could have
balled up their voices, hurled them into
the dirty word hamper, or the black hole of

despicable beliefs. Women had trekked
my body as if it were the most voluptuous
of mountains, but I’d never sat next to a lover
in a candlelit corner of a restaurant, never

chanced a wink over the clink of glasses.
On the street, I’d recoil at the slightest touch
as if my lover’s fingers were simmering,
seek eyes that might have set upon us,

convinced the wind would carry off
the stares, drop them on my parents´ doorstep.
I’d rather die a thousand times
than languish on the stone floor of my desire,

I recited, so close to the edge, my tears
cascaded onto the tracks. Did they see
my breath, the way it somersaulted
in my chest as they kissed themselves

into a time warp, hands slipping blazingly
downwards? As trains stopped howling
into the station? As walls came crumbling
down and the sky broke out in flames?

Parody of Future Self at a First Poetry Reading

---

            —For JoJo

Disclaimer: I’ve been thrown into lions’ dens
and survived. Clawed my way out despite

the ache, the blood. Think drama class, the time
I climbed onto stage with a colossal red

stain on the back of my pink stretch pants
and was blindsided with laughter. Next day

I attacked that three-minute sketch with the gusto
of a Hollywood star, scandal be damned.

Thirty-four years later, trapped in a spotlight,
I’m more meat than body, more cower

than courage, a coward who can’t tame the shake
out of her own flimsy bones. Only a podium

separates me from the audience, a ravenous
pride awaiting a feast, eyes flashing gold

like an omen, as if to say: satisfy our hunger
or we’ll maul your poetry in one fell pounce.

Whose fangs drip like that, with the glisten
of missed meals, of unwanted scraps cast back

in disgust? I’d give my limbs to flee this three-ring
spectacle, vanish into a vast savanna of solitude

where words float upon my mind as if winged.
Where they swoop and flutter until spent

then rest among flora then awaken into metaphor,
inexplicable. Which is to say, I could do with a shot

of Bourbon and a moment. A resounding growl
prowls the auditorium and I can’t tell if it’s

the papers I’m shuffling in search of my first poem
or my stomach left empty for fear of regurgitation

or my voice being dragged through the microphone,
ripped to bite-sized bits as I introduce myself.

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Art by Meridith McNeal