My new book is out – ‘Sissy: Poems on growing up gay‘ – and to celebrate I thought I would post five poems that feature in it. This is one of the most personal poetry collections I have written and I think it’s also my best work to date. If you would like to purchase a copy, it comes in a low-cost ebook and a print version. Otherwise, enjoy the selection below.
Portrait in Heels, Age Four
A boy is caught in the moment; he hangs within
one second and the next, a parent priming him
for posterity but also capturing an inchoate self.
He poses for the camera, poised as a golden era
movie star, mid-action, waiting for his next cue –
a half-remembered film of his own imagination.
What a costume too – his crisp, new white jersey,
covered by a pleated navy gilet with a gilt crest,
on his head a knitted blue, yellow, and red hood,
From which his strawberry blonde hair tumbles
out in curls. Coupled with crimson mitts and navy
shorts despite the crisp frost of an early autumn.
And accessorised with such ugly heels; tan leather
sandals with a full toe and strap around the ankle,
worn with white gym socks – it was the eighties!
He uses a garden brush as an anchor to balance
in those tottering heels, no doubt pilfered from
his mummy’s closet. Oh how he prances around!
What did the photographer think of this, an eye
of a mother fixing him through the view finder,
documenter of a self belied by his choice of shoe.
The Blue Dress
The room has a golden haze of a first memory;
sun shimmers lazily from two French windows
as they illuminate a moment, the magnolia walls
are peopled with an audience of gilded rhombi.
A young boy preens and prances in this light –
his hair is polished copper, his cherubic mien,
his graceful gait. He has on his mother’s dress,
a garment so extravagant it drags on the carpet.
What blue? Cobalt, sapphire, midnight, Oxford –
it changes with every movement. It has puffed,
medieval sleeves that overhang his small hands,
as a bridal train sweeps by his invisible groom.
What reveries on this endless, silent afternoon?
A faery queen, a witch as wicked as Maleficent,
the lonely dead in deathly raiment, or a princess,
innocent, waiting to be saved by rugged knight.
The memory is preserved, but the dress was cut
into small pieces; a square became a football kit,
the blouson discarded, the train a Wizard’s cloak
that he wore about himself long into childhood.
Satyr
I awoke that morning when the sun
had not quite fixed itself in the sky,
and the sleepy bodies all about me
were warm and still, sated by night.
I lay in my hammock, limbs restless
with the desire for adventure. Thus I
crept quietly down from the caravan
to meet the dew of a crystalline hour.
I set out, my naked self wrapped in
an enormous towel full of turquoise,
navy, crimson, and white, flapping as
the flag of a long-forgotten kingdom.
My feet clip-clopped in flip-flops on
tarmac, sounded as hooves of a goat,
and I made my trajectory about this
caravan park, wet, misty, and silent.
Thus I was a free, untethered spirit,
touching my forehead for bony nub,
caressing a chin in search of pointed
beard, feeling about for a goaty tail.
I circuited the path, saw my mother
at the door of our van with a camera
poised, and quick as a flash, I opened
my towel, gave myself to the world.
My small white torso and tanned legs,
my tiny boyhood on display, a wicked
smile on my face, all boy and no goat,
captured, and free for only a moment.
Crop Circles
We strolled up idly from an old disused railway line,
flattening wheat underfoot as we forged a pathway
across this low hill of farmland, three teenage boys
with hair that was copper-spun, flaxen, seal brown.
We found a spot, bent straight tall crops with our
bodies, rolling them like steamrollers into a circle.
This was our secret den of wheat, not alien made –
created by bored teenagers seeking a place to hide
from the world. All about us was gold, an azure sky
hung with great lanterns of creamy white cloud on
an August afternoon – no school, no parental call,
just a slippery sort of freedom only teenagers share.
In the formidable heat, we were sticky and aroused
by an unconscious complicity. It started as a tease,
the boys using an ear of wheat to tickle my cheeks
as I lay back under a hot sun. How I giggled as one
egged the other on, but then in the hushed-up haze
an imperceptible shift occurred in their intention.
Before long, one of them had my arms pinned down
while the other climbed on top of me, as he poked
that scratchy whiskered thing into my ear, my nose,
my mouth in a transferred penetration, took turns to
torment and restrain me. Our teenage bodies writhed,
horseplay to them that was undisclosed desire to me.
Then the clear sensation of my groin against pelvis
as it rubbed discreetly under fabric, until the sudden
sensation of a prickled heat, a tingling in the navel,
a shudder, a biting of the lip, and a sudden wetness.
The game was done – they returned to girlfriends as
the flat wheat was harvested and all of this forgotten.
Pietà
Between us we unfolded the bed linen,
sheets white as a shroud and fragrant,
like aloes. We chatted idly as we went
about our work, prepared the bed for a
visit to this house, cold and unpeopled.
Hers was a kind face, not yet wrinkled,
a motherly likeness Christian statuary
has captured down the ages. Mother to
a man who bore this burden of secret,
of a corpus crucified since childhood.
How blankness of white cloth makes a
demand for new history to be written
between us. My mouth was uncleaved,
ran off as water that cannot be caught,
a baptism of truth. ‘I have known men.’
She left the room for clothes or towels,
perhaps required quietness to absorb,
to adjust facts. My body stiffened as if
marble-made. On her return she asked
‘is this your own way of telling of me?’
Thus the embrace of mother and son,
knowing then the physicality of relief.
I was resurrected after that quarter of
a century dead, now warm with blood.
I peered up into a mien of compassion.
Filed under: Poetry, Writing Tagged: gay poetry, Poet, Poetry, Sissy, Sissy Poems
