WHEN AN OLD CLASSMATE LEARNS I AM A LESBIAN

“Oh my god! I knew it! I always knew it. I was
like Julie is so gay, & people were like oh,
whatever, you just think everybody’s gay because
it’s an all-girls school, but I knew I wasn’t gay, &
I knew most of those girls weren’t gay, so I was
like fuck you, Jasmine, go suck on one of your
Jolly Rancher rings! Do you remember those?
So, how’s it going? Do you have a girlfriend or
something? I have to tell you in college I had a
gay roommate, & she got lucky like every single
night. seriously. I’d come back to the room &
there’d be some ribbon tied around the door,
so I’d have to like hang out by the vending
machines in the lobby looking like a total loser.
I never saw the girls go, though. I guess they
must have gone out the fire escape or
something. Nobody thinks there would be that
many gay girls in Iowa, you know, but I guess
they’re kind of everywhere now. Do you still
live on the West Coast or what? If I were gay,
I would be like San Francisco, here I come, but
truth be told, it’s kind of dirty. My boyfriend took
me there once—we’re actually engaged so
technically he’s my fiancé now, but you know,
he wasn’t then, so—we just walked around a lot &
got some of that good chocolate & saw the seals,
& I was like hey, isn’t there some really cool old prison
that you can see if you take a ferry from here, & then
he was like San Francisco is full of fairies, ha, ha!
I hope that doesn’t offend you. I mean, I thought
it was funny, but my boyfriend is like totally down
with gay people. He would really like you because
you’re smart & it’s kind of hot when a girl isn’t
into you at all, you know? Well, I guess you would
want a girl to be into you, huh? so scratch that.
But I mean most girls are always trying to get with
him & then I have to be like whoa, hands off, that’s
my man. Sometimes I think it would be so much
easier to be gay. It would just take all the pressure
off. I wouldn’t have to get my hair done or worry
how my boobs looked, & if somebody called me
fat, I could just be like I’m a lesbian, douchebag.
I mean, seriously, do you even have to wax?

—

This selection is from Julie Marie Wade’s chapbook When I Was Straight, available from A Midsummer Night’s Press. Purchase your copy here!

Julie Marie Wade is the author of Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir; Without: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2010); Small Fires: Essays (Sarabande Books, 2011); Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2013), winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series; and Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Books, 2013), winner of the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize. She is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University.

Mary Stone Dockery is the author of One Last Cigarette, a poetry collection, and the chapbooks Blink Finch and The Dopamine Letters. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Stirring: A Literary Collection, Gutter Eloquence, Arts & Letters, Redactions, and others. She earned her MFA from the University of Kansas in 2012. Currently, she lives and writes in St. Joseph, MO, where she teaches English at Missouri Western State University and coordinates the First Thursdays Open Mic at Norty’s Bar and Grill.

WHEN MY MOTHER LEARNS I AM A LESBIAN

At first, silence, & then a thud of breath as if
her throat has slid through the chute of her lungs
& landed, heavy—like a stone—like a sword
lodged suddenly inside it.

“This explains why you don’t wear make-up!” she wails.

A snap—a pulsing panic pulled back & lightly
camouflaged as fear: “What will I tell my friends?
How can I tell my friends? I can never tell my friends!”
Finally, fatigued & determined: “No one must know.”

I give her permission to lie—privilege she takes
as right. I promise her nothing has changed except
the second chromosome of the body resting next to me.

she asks, not wanting the answer: “i suppose you have
to sleep in the same bed?”

«No, in sleeping bags, Mom, cocooned on separate couches
still wrapped in our swaddling clothes.»

I could have said it, but I didn’t.
No tolerance for the absurd.
My mother’s voice, all tissue paper & cellophane,
turns tearful, liquid in its pain: “Where did we go wrong?”

I want to tell her not to forgive me, plead through
the twisted wires that she will not waste her prayers.

“We raised you with God’s laws,” she says.
“We told you to be pure.”

“You raised me to love,” I say.
“You told me to be happy.”

«But she didn’t mean this way, didn’t mean this way,
Dear God, she didn’t mean this way.»

I watch out the window, sigh.
Already prayers are streaming up the sky.

—

This selection is from Julie Marie Wade’s chapbook When I Was Straight, available from A Midsummer Night’s Press. Purchase your copy here!

Julie Marie Wade is the author of Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir; Without: Poems(Finishing Line Press, 2010); Small Fires: Essays (Sarabande Books, 2011); Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2013), winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series; and Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Books, 2013), winner of the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize. She is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University.

Mary Stone Dockery is the author of One Last Cigarette, a poetry collection, and the chapbooksBlink Finch and The Dopamine Letters. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Stirring: A Literary Collection, Gutter Eloquence, Arts & Letters, Redactions, and others. She earned her MFA from the University of Kansas in 2012. Currently, she lives and writes in St. Joseph, MO, where she teaches English at Missouri Western State University and coordinates the First Thursdays Open Mic at Norty’s Bar and Grill.

WHEN I WAS STRAIGHT

There was a man in the moon
& a man at the head of the table.
There was a woman with a dishrag

draped across her narrow shoulder.
Sometimes they were on television,
& the laugh track softened their features,

made me long for them like a summer’s cool rain.

In that first world, the man always drove,
& the woman always read a magazine—
Good Housekeeping or Better Homes & Gardens.

The woman did not know how to work
the lawnmower, & the man did not know
how to work the microwave. They were hesitant

& grateful in the presence of each other’s bodies.

When Isee them now, I am too old to be mistaken
for their daughter. The women no longer smile,
pat my hand, promise the right man is soon to

come along. The men do not whistle or nod.
Even the sky grows distant, the new moon turns charcoal
against gray. “It’s getting dark out,” the couples say,

& draw the doors closed, leading to the master bedroom.

—

This selection is from Julie Marie Wade’s chapbook When I Was Straight, available from A Midsummer Night’s Press. Purchase your copy here!

Julie Marie Wade is the author of Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir; Without: Poems(Finishing Line Press, 2010); Small Fires: Essays (Sarabande Books, 2011); Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2013), winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series; and Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Books, 2013), winner of the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize. She is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University.

Mary Stone Dockery is the author of One Last Cigarette, a poetry collection, and the chapbooksBlink Finch and The Dopamine Letters. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Stirring: A Literary Collection, Gutter Eloquence, Arts & Letters, Redactions, and others. She earned her MFA from the University of Kansas in 2012. Currently, she lives and writes in St. Joseph, MO, where she teaches English at Missouri Western State University and coordinates the First Thursdays Open Mic at Norty’s Bar and Grill.

WHEN I WAS STRAIGHT

I did not love women as I do now.
I loved them with my eyes closed my back turned.
I loved them silent, & startled, & shy.

The world was a dreamless slumber party,
sleeping bags like straightjackets spread out on
the living room floor, my face pressed into a

slender pillow.

All night I woke to rain on the stranger’s windows.
No one remembered to leave a light on in the hall.
Someone’s father seemed always to be shaving.

When I stood up, I tried to tiptoe
around the sleeping bodies, their long hair
speckled with confetti, their faces blanched by the

porch-light moon.

I never knew exactly where the bathroom was.
I tried to wake the host girl to ask her, but she was
only one adrift in that sea of bodies. I was ashamed

to say they all looked the same to me, beautiful &
untouchable as stars. It would be years before
I learned to find anyone in the sumptuous,

terrifying dark.

—

This selection is from Julie Marie Wade’s chapbook When I Was Straight, available from A Midsummer Night’s Press. Purchase your copy here!

Julie Marie Wade is the author of Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir; Without: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2010); Small Fires: Essays (Sarabande Books, 2011); Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2013), winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series; and Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Books, 2013), winner of the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize. She is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University.

Mary Stone Dockery is the author of One Last Cigarette, a poetry collection, and the chapbooks Blink Finch and The Dopamine Letters. Her poetry and prose has appeared in Stirring: A Literary Collection, Gutter Eloquence, Arts & Letters, Redactions, and others. She earned her MFA from the University of Kansas in 2012. Currently, she lives and writes in St. Joseph, MO, where she teaches English at Missouri Western State University and coordinates the First Thursdays Open Mic at Norty’s Bar and Grill.