By: Wheeler Light
i.
I stand up to perform for an audience
and I perform for an audience
ii.
In my bedroom
I stand in front of the mirror
and perform for myself
I will be performing for an audience later
and don’t want to seem ill-prepared
iii.
I kiss a girl in front of my mom
and absolutely am not queer
iv.
I stand up to perform for an audience
but one of my legs shatters as I stand up
I drag my corpse to the stage
and start to read my poem
before fainting of shock
v.
I play baseball for my father
and absolutely am not queer
vi.
In the bathroom
I pop pimples in the mirror
I am performing for an audience later
and don’t want to look like
I don’t care about skincare
or being presentable
Blood trickles down my face
and I cannot stop
This is how to be vulnerable in performance
If an audience knew
I would be disgusting
too relatable
Someone might want to talk to me after
and say they share this experience
and that is not what my performance is about
You are not the monologue
the direct action of your own existence
You are not a queer
even if you feel like one
vii.
My father calls me a faggot
and I do not cry
I am not sad about this
I have become accustomed
to having roles thrust upon me
so I am faggot for a day
or a week or for the rest of my life
I am not queer
I am just acting
I tell my friends
viii.
I bend over backwards to love a girl
I hate who hates me
We wrap our bodies around each other
until we are a car accident
I lose my virginity to a man
after our seventh break up
before getting back together with her
so I can act straight again
ix.
I stand up to perform for an audience
but start crying instead
and the audience cries too
We all get stage fright together
imagining everyone naked in their sorrow
Sometimes I think
I don’t want to wake up tomorrow
if I’m not putting on an act
but I don’t tell anyone this
because I am not my performance
and I don’t want anyone to worry about me
x.
I come out to my family
and they are fine with it
They already knew me as the faggot
xi.
I burn down the house I’ve been locked inside of in my head. Everyone on the train looks at me like I am the crazy person on the train but I’m not the crazy person on the train, I’m just a queer who’s been acting his entire life but I will act like the crazy person on the train if it makes anyone’s day easier.
xii.
I stand up to say I am queer on stage
But when I say I am queer on stage I am not myself
I am queer on stage
Do not relate to me
I am acting the way I want to be day to day
instead of acting straight like I do day to day
Right now I am a queer on stage
But I want you to understand what it is to be rainwater
Constantly in motion whether or not it wants to be
I want to be part of a lake
Or a community
I want to act okay today
Like I’ve never been hit by my father
Or like I never hit my girlfriend
Like I’ve never used my queerness to justify my behavior
Like I do not know what irony is
I stand to perform for myself in front of a mirror
Like rainwater is not entirely transparent
That when people see me acting
They know that this smiling face
It is not my face
And that when I perform
I am the only person who doesn’t know it
Wheeler Light lives somewhere in the US and is taking recommendations on places to live. He is the author of Blue Means Snow (Bottlecap Press 2018) and Hometown Onomastics (Pitymilk Press 2019). "I tour and perform poetry a lot. There’s this one poem I do you can find on Slamfind, “Poem Not Applicable,” that I do at every show because it helps sell books—people like it. Queerness is complicated—both performance and breathing. Sometimes, I’ll forget I’m queer while shopping for groceries or taking a shower. I wrote this poem because I’m not always sure the image I purport of my queerness in performance is what my queerness is—how I live it. I grew up in a very intense household where lots of language was thrown around that really stuck to me. Some people don’t like that I use the “f” word in poems but it was one of my first nicknames and it’s followed my entire life. I only performed this poem once and it was very intense and I don’t think the crowd understood it. I had a small panic attack on stage. Sometimes, my queerness is that small panic attack. This poem exists to try and capture that."