And that was not homophobia, pure and simple people. That was gendered. If I’d of been more

feminine, that would not have happened. I am incorrectly female. – Hannah Gadsby. Nannette

What disturbed me was the scorn of the other boys, not for my sexuality, which they accepted

and sometimes enjoyed, but for a feminine sensibility which they despised… – Patrick White. Flaws in the Glass


I will wake and put on my boy drag today.
I will nourish my children and place them

upon the toilet and start on the washing

and the Sisyphean sequences of  housework

then preschool for the first, the second to playgroup

where I will sit awkward as a running hen

amongst the mothers who slide sideways

glances and don’t let their children

come too close.
I will rise and put on my boy drag today.
button down my hands

bind shoulders back  and walk

stolid and straight – stomp as if I am angry

at the earth and stitch hips so that they

do not sway in that way and I will not glisten

or glimmer- I will refrain from camp of any elevation.
I will restrain myself

from discussing art, poetry, pottery

Austen, handsome men, handsome

women, clothes and I will rough

cut syllables from my sentences and shutter

my face if I should be left to try

and speak with the hegemonic

monsters of this place made of random

angers, tribal t-shirts and calibrating eyes.
I will awake and put on my boy drag today.
And when my offspring and I have strolled home through

clattering bark chime and heckling cockatoo mobs

I will put on my print apron and we will bake

and I will make tea and allow myself to be just

for a moment
and like a fifth rate Cavafy recall the all too brief days

of the sashay intersections black lipstick, eyeliner

 and sliding shimmers and these boots, these boots, these boots-

and never for one second a sissy or a cuckold for I would decry

all the heteronormative binary bullshit behind all of that-
Though this body, 
tending as it does to short, thick and hirsute

is mine, and I am at home here –
more or less.
But for a moment I allowed myself to be beautiful
and with lined eyes would gaze loving up

with lips cupped around labia and tongue slitting

up and around clitoral hood and swilling the oh so bitter

and  so very sweet- plying cock and playing glans between lips

parsing  the tense and tremble in hips under fingers and the sudden

head- long acceleration of he is coming, she is coming, ve is coming

they                              are

                                                            cum                              ing
and with dress hitched up around hips would slide my own cock

inside and ride or feel a blissful fist flowering open in my belly or simply

kiss other beings- close and comfortable and beautiful

enough to strut down the streets of the gay metropolis

rmanifesting desperate defiance

at the clone culture queers

and weekend tourists all alike

and at every knuckle of

drunk young men

swallowing terror

semen thick upon the tongue.
Today I will rise and put on my boy drag.