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 Review, Hobart, Spillway, Exquisite Corpse, Diode Poetry, and other journals. Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular.
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