YOUNG DYKE
No one calls me that
anymore. But that long Y,
it licks the space. I long
for that Y in my name.
Am I still young?
These other dykes
are young, wet
from their clamshell
wombs. I am dry
having smoked and smoked
and not slept and been not
well for quite a while.
But I am a dyke,
I think. This was my surname
for years. I wore it
like some fucking
Birkenstocks. Art school dykes
would run their palms
along my unshaven legs
and feed me pitted cherries.
Still sometimes I ran
from this title. I have worn
sweet perfumes, let my nails
grow, spit on Amy Lowell’s grave.
From between my legs,
Missie said I was no dyke.
Why did I bring venison
and not a bowl of hummus?
So I asked her,
don’t I look like one
from this angle? I have rested
my head on the laps
of men, sure, but I am
fuzzy and mad and mad
about Hacker.
If Eileen Myles had a cock,
it would be sucked red
by all the New York dykes.
I am not above this.
We, dykes, are a delicate
species, only able
to communicate
through erasures
of Sappho poems,
the soft exchange
of shirts, the moving
of shame from one
body to another.
—from Rattle #67, Spring 2020
__________
Alison Hazle: “As a survivor of art school, I often find myself turning to the odd and the absurd when writing a poem. This is, of course, when I am not trying in vain to write something new about grief. I am pursing a degree in English, currently living in Baltimore with my beloved python, Ted.”
