Welcome to Mutant High!
says Iceman Bobby Drake
to Rogue (frail, tremulous,
delicate as an origami heron)
her first day at the School
for Gifted Children. The irony
not lost on queer kids who must
consider the short distance
from gifted to weird
to freak to faggot to dyke.
What wouldn’t I have given
30 years ago to find my own
special school, my own
Bobby Drake: burnished amber
ringlets, smile that could sail
me to the frothy shores of Saturn,
lips poised to shape ice flower
from winnowing minty breath.
Welcome to Mutant High!
Where we understand the terror
of discovery, the need to conceal
the longing that rocks us free.
Welcome to the school for gender
anarchy, no-longer secret powers,
heads lifted high in defiance.
Welcome to the place where
we can flame or freeze, sever
or mend, conjure or transmogrify.
Here we are Priestesses and Medicine
Men, Shamans and Empaths,
Two-Spirit Warriors and Channels,
fetuses who evolved long after
others stuck to pink and blue: the lie
that ‘other’ means ‘opposite’.
Welcome to Mutant High!
Where brilliance is unleashed,
brilliance of idea, of skill,
of breath, of movement. Brilliance
to heal the will. Where we are safe
from Christian Cannibals
and bullies. Hounds who must piss
on anyone they can’t fight or fuck.
Where it’s OK to be the Punk
or the Bitch or Lipstick Lez
or Twink or Leatherman or Queen
with the Attitude, or Spiv or Problem
Child or fucking Prince of Darkness
and ‘Yeah, you’re goddamn right,
I’m a faggot, so piss off!’
Where we’re not forced to bend
or beg or pretend
we don’t hear
when they try to diminish us
with the countless names
for what they detest
in themselves.
Christopher Stephen Soden is President of The Dallas Poets Community workshop and is earning his MFA in Poetry.