I call myself Bi a Queer
Tangle of Free-Form dreads²
They cannot Nail us to a Pronoun³
I’m a Not-Boy – and maybe a Not-Girl⁴
Scarcely a Man’s voice, and Scarcely a
Woman’s either – but what is it Saying?⁵
I’m neither a Woman, Happy to be like a Man –
Nor a Man, Blunt and Flat enough to feel no Lack⁶
He’s a She – He’s not a He or a She – He’s a He
And a She – She-He – He-She Hee! Hee! Hee!⁷
Queer: the open mesh of Possibilities, Gaps &
Overlaps, Dissonances & Resonances, Lapses
& Excesses of Meaning, when the constituent
Elements of one’s Gender and Sexuality or
Cannot be made to signify Monolithically⁸
If an Explorer should come back to bring
Word of Other Sexes looking through the
Branches of other trees at other Skies,
Nothing would better serve Humanity⁹
If that’s being Queer then we could
Do with a bit More Queerness¹⁰
¹ George Eliot, Middlemarch
² Akwaeke Emezi, Disclosure
³ Fran Lock, On Insomnia
⁴ Foster Noone, Fostering
⁵ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness
⁶ Sylvia Plath, Three Women
⁷ Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
⁸ Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick, Tendencies
⁹ Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
¹⁰ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring