What Rough Beast | 06 26 20 | Koss

Koss
Field Days: Queer Spotted in Smithville Restaurant

(Instructions: you can reorder the lines to your liking, no scissors included)

Sometimes 
you don’t 
know how 
a day will play 
a simple thing 
like lunch 
can become 
a tiny war
inside 
a bigger
war	 
behind green
glass grids
pale brick
the faux
wood counter

tried to eat	
at the usual place      
my favorite spot 
with cheap shawarma 
owned by some 
white guy
pushing ethnic eats
in this tiny town 
whose only
known culture
is food
dude behind counter 
says can I help you sir   
then ma’am   
then gestures
and adds 	
he	she	[whatever you are]	
louder loudest
doubles over 	
grabs his gut
like he’s the fuck 
funniest thing 
this side of the moon

maybe I had changed 		
in the last 
thirty visits
where I came
and ate
shawarma
without fare

he allowed 
for that 	
in 	his 		[joke]	
he
had an audience	
add the ham	
what a ca(r)d 	
no
dag 	
he laughed 	[he laughed]	
at his 	gaffe 	the 	ass

my hair is long		
Banshee long
Cherokee long
but just a little	
and me tall 	 [yes a	 bit]
but hardly
the fifty foot
woman and less
the average man

I left 	angry	
no food	 
humiliation 
too high 
a price	
then returned 	in a pink black rage	
dropped
chandeliers 
with 	red [superbitch] eyes 
and sound
sheer and clean
as a train	scream

yes bitch
is the better
word
for me	
I’ll sex myself
for anger
made history 
a scene	
in a
dinkish hick
town 	[the one I grew up in	live in now]
by daring to say		gay 	the word
at my [former] favorite restaurant    
 	
secret identity of superBansheeBitch
revealed agent androgyne 
with her mystery cocktwat
all shooting hot and shifting 
in her razor taser pantyknickers
[yeah bunched too] 	
up my ambiguous non-ass 
while I ranted the impromptu terms 
of our sudden divorce
to my own audience 	
those patrons 
for which I was 	
dubbed the mocking 
queer bird

but 
if you only 
if you only
if you only 	knew
him
the manager said

[	]

Yelp 	[yes too]	 
the only
justice queers 
don’t have 
to pay for or rent in a suit 
or beg for
or 
or 
or.... not really justice 	but a moment
a word

Two weeks later 	
at Tim Horton’s 		
a fifty-somethin’
[not feet]
woman
kind, light 	
with a white 
wide smile 
that could bring dead
chrysanthemums back 
to spanking high life 
said 	hey	pretty	lady
how is your day 
	
but how could I be 	
both those things
sir				pretty lady
in a span of two weeks
but I received it 
with a smile 	
a coffee    
a plain donut
and gratitude 

I don’t know
what I look like
can’t see through
dykes don’t want to 
through some others’
eyes Being is a thing
reserved for straight 
white 	           men

and

restaurants 
come and go
open and close
their secret doors
people kindled
change is slow
and I clock old
and finished
in this country
of clowned
American
towns

—Submitted on 06/25/2020

Koss, a writer and visual artist, holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has appeared in Cincinnati ReviewHobartSpillwayExquisite CorpseDiode Poetry, and other journals. Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.

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