Queer Utopia
It’s April.
I watch you shoot arrows
from a smooth-carved cherrywood bow.
The target is a rope gong
whose center keeps moving
because of the breeze, and your arrows
bounce in the grass. We talk
about nothing, and we talk
about the baby boom
scheduled for when this is over
a whole country holed up
in its bedroom
means a new generation of
children, expected
some time around Christmas.
Well.
The dogwood tree is early. It’s
an unusually pink season.
Days like this,
you are part boy but very female.
Your shed door swings open because
of the breeze, and inside
there’s a large print poster—
It reads, “NO SIR!”
and dances for
a moment, on its tape hinges.
Retrospectively, What 8pm was Like in Brooklyn
O how we leaned from balconies.
how we cheered & prayed & whooped. how
we hollered with our good lungs, how we
waved and spun in place. how
we stuck our torsos out
of the enormous pores of skyscrapers
to applaud the dying nurses. to scatter
a trail of breadcrumbs. to blow
our kisses. to be a
little like wind.
R.K. Fauth is a graduate student in English at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where she is also a Lannan Poetry Fellow and research assistant to the poet Carolyn Forché. Her work has been recognized by Passages North Literary Journal, Solas Travel Writing Awards, New Millennium Writings, and The Fulbright Korea Infusion. She writes mainly on queer femininity and rural working class America. She’s originally from New York.
Cover Image by Kurt Viers.
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