MargOH! and Nellie
By MargOH! Channing
Those two girls what a pair
In step walking side by side
Talking in a carefree tune
Thoughts dancing, smiling wide
People staring but they won’t hide
Friends ’til the end
In step walking side by side
MargOH is a big boned gal
Most everyone looks twice
Covering up with L’Oreal
Sophisticated glamour is always nice
Working on an angle, independent and free
Stop staring; she’s who she wants to be
Nellie is a young pioneer, ambitious, no fear
She has a vintage style and talent that’s rare
She’s no pageant gone bad
Her music makes you imagine a world both happy and sad
She sings for human and animal rights
Optimistic we’ll win the fight
Standing tall, independent and free
Stop staring; she’s who she wants to be
MargOH and Nellie don’t fit the mold
Two works of art bigger than life to behold
Don’t ask don’t tell
They’re not ready to say
What business is it of yours anyway?
These two friends ’til the end
Working on an angle, independent and free
Stop staring; they’re who they want to be
It’s not a matter of sexual orientation
Small-minded people currently rule this nation
Just so that you’re in the know
MargOH and Nellie are just friends on the go
Two friends ’til the end
Working on an angle, independent and free
Stop staring; they’re who they want to be
They’re who they want to be
MargOH! Channing is the ex-wife of child star Rodney Allen Rippy, stand-in to Liza Minnelli, confidante to the stars, legendary extra and very excited to now add poet to the list. To learn more about MargOH!, check out her blog, www.margohchanning.blogspot.com.
Dry-Humping on a Second-Hand Couch
by Sheree Greer
When he found out about her he called me a slut. When I told her about him, she threw up. I hadn’t expected either response. I never really anticipated ever having to tell my lover I had a fiancé and my fiancé that I liked the ladies. Expectations are funny like that.
Everyone expected me to marry Isaac and I was well on my way. He was tall and had dark eyes that were at once playful and determined. And when we made love, he gave it to me like I was the last woman on Earth; hard, long and teetering on extinction. It was expected that we would buy a house, have two adorable strapping sons and adopt dogs from the shelter. Neat, nice and expected like three follows one and two, like the stars that burn into view once the sun has set.
‘Screw that! That’s complete crap!’
When I heard the outburst, I had to turn in my seat to see the source. Jadene, a woman with glowing copper skin, long slender fingers and short curly hair had jumped out of her seat. Filled with a gentle rage and talking loudly with her wide mouth and strong hands, she made her way to the front of the lounge. A small group of us writing students had gathered to watch the latest State of the Union address from Captain Dildo himself.
‘It’s no wonder everyone’s resigning,’ Jadene said. ‘The administration is like the Titanic and we’re all going down.’
Everyone exploded into discussion, but my ears sought out her smooth, honey voice. I hadn’t expected to be so taken. I didn’t anticipate walking her home. Being with her was extraordinary—an unforeseen journey into shadowy parts of my heart I had been too afraid to explore. I forgot about being neat and nice. I became daring, bold and passionate. One, two, chair and the only star I could see was the one shining and twinkling right before me. I followed Jadene to her room and had more than one cup of jasmine tea. She asked me if I was nervous before she kissed me. I lied and said ‘yes.’ She made love to me like I was the only woman that ever was; unique, strong and created for eternity.
Everything is different now and I don’t know what will come next. I didn’t think I would fall so hard—didn’t think I’d get so twisted. I’m like one of those old telephone cords that once stretched enough, folds and turns and wraps around itself no matter how hard you try to straighten it out. And maybe that’s the problem; trying to straighten out. When I was fourteen and dry-humping on a second-hand couch, I hadn’t expected it would lead to this. Expectations are funny like that.
Sheree L. Greer, born and raised in Milwaukee, Wis., is a freelance writer and M.F.A. candidate at Columbia College Chicago.
April
by Dale Heath
On a warm April morning
I prepare for a trip to the mall.
I approach the mirror
In my bedroom
And survey myself
From all angles,
Taking inventory:
Shaven legs,
Short girlish shorts,
Orange T-shirt,
(A little tight in the chest),
Long, crazy, frizzy hair,
Beard shadow on my lip and chin.
I can’t possibly go out like this.
I quickly remove all of my clothes
And begin to redress,
Grabbing an old faded oversized black T-shirt,
A big, baggy gray hooded sweatshirt
and a pair of unremarkable blue jeans.
Pulling my hair back into a severe ponytail,
I look at myself
In the mirror
In my bedroom
And feel a wave of shame so strong
That I have to sit down
To steady myself,
Holding my head in my hands.
I can’t possibly go out like this.
I get up from the bed with a new resolve
And remove my clothes once again,
Finding the crumpled shorts
Flung so carelessly to the floor,
And the slightly tight orange shirt
That I secretly adore.
Dressed once again,
With my hair down,
I approach the mirror,
Shaking,
Deciding in that instant
To trust my first instinct:
And go out
Into the world
To the store
And risk being seen
As I wish to be seen,
As me.
Dale Heath resides in Forest Park and works full-time as a librarian.
Portrait of a Man, c. 1575
by Benjamin Dahlbeck
The last three years
have been one long agony.
Watching you from a distance.
Hearing your voice only on the wind.
Seeing you on the street each and every day.
Knowing you move further and further away from me.
Once you spoke of my full, sensual lips
as we lay hidden under trees
alongside the hastening river,
our bodies touching.
You stroked my ear,
my lips enticed your cheek.
And more. Much more.
Do you remember?
I never forget.
Our apprenticeships began and
crushed a small piece of our souls.
The great writer and the famous painter
instead a junior blacksmith and a simple tailor.
Expectations must always be fulfilled.
With our duties came more scrutiny,
so the grass and flowers
at our place under the trees by the river
blossomed and thrived
while my heart lay fallow.
Outwardly I pretended happiness.
I did my work well. Especially your birthday shirt.
Silk is not too fine for a blacksmith.
I saw you wear it once.
At the fair, when you were arm-in-arm
with the chandler’s daughter.
Did she know it was from me?
When people asked, I spoke of a maiden
who had caught my fancy. Often.
Perhaps too often, as folk began to
wonder why this maiden never
appeared by my side at fairs or festivals.
When the boy came to tell me the news
of your wedding banns, I boxed his ears
and knocked him to the floor.
An intense, spontaneous explosion of passion
unknown to me since we last lay side by side
at our place under the trees by the river.
A brief lunacy overtook me and thoughts
of poisoning the chandler’s daughter, even you,
entered my mind. Plenty of mercury about.
But the hatter’s madness had not a strong grip upon me.
Dare I say lover’s grief embraced me more firmly?
I made a shirt to wear at your wedding.
Black silk and velvet.
Small ovals running down the front.
Tears I cannot express externally.
A high collar to cover the neck
you stroked so tenderly an age ago.
Crisp white ruffles to help keep
my head erect and a witness to
the permanence of my loss.
But I cannot bear it.
Instead, I have found an artist,
a luckier man than I,
to paint my portrait in this garment.
My wedding gift to you.
He is highly skilled. I did not expect to see
the sorrow in my eyes so clearly.
And yet the mischievous glint
you elicited on so many occasions
remains as well. Look to that.
Hang this portrait where I can gaze forever
upon you,
for I will not be there.
I shall be at our place under the trees.
One last time will I feel the kindling of my heart,
only, instead of plunging into your embrace,
I shall fold into the arms of the hastening river
to be carried further and finally away from you.
Benjamin is currently finishing an English in Writing degree at Northwestern and is very excited to have his first published work appear in these pages.
Ballad of the Little League Star: A Self-Portrait
(In Honor of Reginald Shepherd)
by John Medieros
It never was the same, of course, except it never changed for him, when the others gathered together in one shower stall after the game, lined up like prisoners in a concentration camp, all in line, all single file, all waiting for the hand behind the barred window to stretch out and pass the next white towel.
That moment lasted forever. It is lasting still. He is there, thirty-five by now, watching the boys hide themselves from each other. That is what they still are—boys—despite the hair around their nipples, despite the erections they try to cover with lather and towel, despite the fact that they look down at each other in anticipation and competition, knowing that they will not talk about this for weeks.
They are still boys despite the jock strap, the thickened muscle, the deep voice, the hairy knuckle, the Adam’s apple. They are still boys, with lunch bags still packed by their mothers each day.
It never was the same, of course, except it never changed for him, when the other players decided they did not want him on their team, never asking him about his undefeated record, his.666 batting average, his size 10 cleats, his ability to hit a home run from both the left and right sides of the plate.
They noticed instead his eyes as they roamed the locker-room benches, his head as it bowed as if keeping a secret, the extra time he took to fold and unfold his clothes. He looks back at those days, how they’ve come and gone, how they’ve lost pieces of themselves along the way, how they held promises that washed away like dirt on the shower tile.
John Medeiros is an award-winning writer and poet living in Minneapolis. Please visit his website at www.jmedeiros.net.
Several Daniels
by Christopher Murray
Last night I lay in bed, suddenly awake
at half-past four. Pissed, then lay down again,
thinking of you. Daniel, you’re such a flake.
Don’t return my calls, then lure me to your den,
then blame your epilepsy as you shake
me off. Last night I stared and smoked and when
I wondered if you, too, were sleepless,
saw us dancing, your warm hand on my ass.
My hopeful morning dream, your hard caress,
lulled me back to sleep. Then a nightmare, crass
and lewd, overtook my mind, made a mess
on the sheets. When I woke again, the mass
of my body felt weighty and real.
I don’t know where you are or how you feel.
Christopher Murray is a Brooklyn writer whose work has appeared on NPR and in Bloom, Lambda Book Report, Advocate.com, Gay City News and the New York Blade. He is a counselor at NYC’s LGBT Community Center.
Kate with an Eight
by Anna Pulley
Once, when Logan was still impressionable enough to think rhythmic breathing would somehow align the cosmos, her roommate ‘persuaded’ her to join an online dating service. Actually, the roommate invented an online personality and used Logan’s e-mail address. Only after Logan began receiving explicitly sexual e-mails from strangers did she finally catch on.
‘Your tagline is ‘I’m K8, wanna date?’ Isn’t that clever?’
‘It’s brilliant, Jenn. You should put it on a bumper sticker.’ Logan sighed into her herbal tea. Passivity was her present form of spiritual currency.
‘What’s the big deal? It’s not like I put your phone number on a billboard next to a naked picture of you masturbating to boy-band posters.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Just try it out for a while. Chat. Be yourself.’
‘But I’m not myself. I’m K8, remember? Kate with an eight! The blonde D.J. from Topeka who enjoys science-fiction movies, blow jobs and miniature ceramic turtles.’ Logan began blowing on her tea with a startling flurry of huffs. She was winded.
‘God, you’re so uptight.’
‘Uptight?’ she said. ‘I’m Kate with a fucking eight!’
Logan did end up responding to one of the e-mails, from a slightly older woman who bred dressage horses in New York and pronounced her name swiftly and breathy, emphasizing the first syllable a little more than necessary, LOW-guhn, which made her feel like part of the line of military governors who ruled Japan until the revolution of 1867-68. Logan also liked the idea of making love in a barn, a red barn that was badly in need of a paint job and with the slightly exhibitionistic feeling that might come from the blank expressions of farm animals napping and looking in on them from the dying pasture nearby. Logan wasn’t sure if the Internet woman had any farm animals besides horses, or a barn for that matter, but the idea of it! Oh, the idea!
They met at a fruit stand near the county court house. They each bought a mango and ate them with their bare hands on the sidewalk while they talked. The fruit stand was Logan’s idea. She’d hoped that the animalistic and tactile combination of hunger and produce would hasten the arrival of their impending coition.
‘You look familiar,’ said Logan.
‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ Logan scanned her brain files from the last couple months—customer service reps, passersby, people on differing floors of her apartment complex, celebrity gossip magazines—but couldn’t place her. Then, the woman shifted her round-framed glasses and brushed a few strands of short, darkish brown hair from her forehead, to reveal a mauve-colored lightning bolt.
‘And?’ the woman said, her excitement stifled only slightly by Logan’s terrifically pastiche facial expressions.
Logan hesitated, twisting her lips into a kind of facial pull-up.
‘Harry … Potter?’ she said, diving face first into her mango.
‘Yes!’ she squealed and clapped, just once. ‘The lightning bolt does it every time. Once, I had to break out the wand, but I knew you were going to be one of the sharp ones!’
Anna Pulley is an AmeriCorps volunteer working at a charter high school in West Town. She’s going to be teaching gym in summer school, bringing her that much closer to completing the lesbian stereotype.
Elder Hostel
by Katherine A. Gleason
When I returned to the city, I was sent to jail for four weeks because I didn’t know that, under the new regime, menopause, wrinkles, and gray hair were all illegal. My hair, its natural silver cascading down my back, attracted attention. I was stopped, taken into custody and booked for looking my age.
‘Haven’t you heard of dye?’ the jail matron said and shoved me into a cell.
‘I was just going to my studio,’ I said, ‘to paint.’ The cell was not at all what I expected. No cold concrete, no cinder blocks, no bunk bed. No, this cell looked exactly like a dressing room at Bloomingdale’s. And then I realized that I was in Bloomingdale’s and I would be required to serve my sentence inside.
My hair was dyed a light chestnut. Facial unguents, balms and salves were applied. My laugh lines, crows feet, marionette furrows and forehead creases faded into a smooth mask. I struggled to hold on to myself—my flaws, my character, my memories. The night before my release, I was waxed, bathed, plucked, perfumed and dressed in new clothes. A group of us, prisoners about to be sprung, huddled together, whispering through the night. Others had been treated more harshly—electrolysis, exfoliation, poisonous injections, dermabrasion. In the morning, when I hit the street, I was unrecognizable and ready to start my life of crime. I went underground, shaved off my chestnut tresses, had them crafted into wigs—a youthful shag and a cute bob. Wearing the bob, I masquerade as a Bloomingdale’s employee, the extra wig stashed in my shiny nylon bag. One by one, I smuggle prisoners out of the store, into the subway and down—down to where we can all be our gray and wrinkled selves.
Katherine A. Gleason is a Manhattan-based freelance writer. Her work has appeared Best American Erotica 1996 (Simon & Schuster), Best Lesbian Erotica 1997 (Cleis Press), Cream City Review, The First Word Bulletin, and on-line in Ducts.org and La Petite Zine.
Blitzkrieg
by Joe Eldridge
One week after Lincoln’s birthday,
on a dirty snowmelt in the gutter day,
I polkaed past my Mainz hotel’s excavated
strip of a Roman wall, danced down
salted steps towards the Domplatz,
segued into a vigorous waltz
three-quartering to the golden Rhein,
but shy of the Guttenberg statue,
forty steps from the horror struck
face of Pope Boniface II, sixty paces
from the grudgingly touching
memorial to the Jews of WWII,
I was completely flabbergasted
by what I first thought to be
a group of locals pondering
a vendor’s lackadaisically penned menu
but on blinking it transmogrified
into an anti-war activist’s Mercedes door
peppered with exclamation point slogans
prominently featuring a blown-up
poster of Bush, the secondary one…
wickedly smiling…eyes slightly off-kilter…
and while I know not a word of Deutsch,
a boyhood of Col. Klink bellowing
at Sgt. Schultz translated the animated
protestor so I got the gist of dummkopf.
That night I dreamed I had sex
with the President and all
the writhing in the world
couldn’t prod him into action.
He was a lazy bottom, a do-me
queen who lay immovable, limbs
stretched out Da Vinci-like, gripping
all four bunched-up cotton corners,
stubbornly hanging on with the tenacity
of a monkey hanging onto a tree
in a monsoon, and that goofy,
goofy winning grin of his
forcing me much too easily
into doing all the fucking work.
Joe Eldridge is a black belt in Seido karate competing in Gay Games VII in Chicago this July. He has published poetry in The Gay & Lesbian Review as well as Windy City Times and will begin work on his MFA in poetry this coming fall at Columbia College.