R. Erica Doyle

Faggot: A Definition

You faggot, says Naquan to Isaiah

and I know he means you idiot, you beast,

you stupid, barely human

acting-like-you-don’t-know-any-better

because that’s what faggots are to 14 year-old boys–

at least in public, to each other, in front of girls

and teachers, where everyone can see.

 

We’re reading a book about a masquerade

and the masks of our own cheeks

are something we may or may not get to.

 

It’s the student teacher’s moment

and so I don’t say anything.

I’m wearing the mask that blinks SUPERVISE

across my forehead that has, somehow, flipped

to HOMOSEXUAL and I can’t turn off

the red and blaring neon of my silence.

 

You faggot, I said once, and looked at Bob,

who was a faggot, in the way that doesn’t mean stupid

but that meant someday I’d know he and Javier

had been together for twenty years,

and since I was a 17 years old, and he was generous,

and maybe tired, he said It’s okay

to my apology, his blue faggot eyes singed with hurt,

and we walked back to the car, faggot hanging between us.

 

I hear Professor George is a faggot,

whisper Eva’s students, as she walked behind them

on the way to class, where she teaches

faggot stained Black history. Mammies and pickaninnies

swarm from her faggot computer, and she calls me and says,

Now I’m a faggot, a lesbian faggot.

The lesbian faggot who taught me how to drive,

who drove a carload of faggot friends to my mother’s funeral,

who, in her faggot apartment dried my faggot tears

over faggot coffee made with my favorite faggot creamer.

 

Rene was a faggot. His faggot funeral is tomorrow.

He was a faggot professor of faggot Portuguese literature

and his faggot leg was hurting so he went to the doctor

and his faggot cancer had metastasized all over his faggot body.

Dulce, his best faggot friend, cared for him every faggot day.

One day he had a faggot fever or, maybe, it was the morphine,

the faggot painkiller, and he said, Do you see them?

His dead faggot mother and father in the window,

¡Que maricones! Floating on a faggot Puerto Rican breeze,

his voice down the corridor, saying Ay, Dulce,

though she wasn’t in the room, at the faggot hospital

with its faggot doctors and faggot sun through the windows of a dying faggot.

 

Tomorrow, I’ll go to the funeral home with all the other faggots

And wish him good journey to faggot heaven.

 

The faggot years drag on and

no matter how many

faggot tears I share or however many faggot cares

I bear, faggot fears from bigots

who can’t handle their own souls

still rear their bitter heads,

still gotta prove might is right

or truth is lies

trying to regulate the space between I love you and skin,

between breath and breast, between my heart

and the only thing that keeps its beating

having day after day after second of meaning,

day after day after second of meaning,

day after day after second of faggot meaning,

faggot meaning,

faggot meaning.

 

 

 


“Faggot” first appeared in Bloom: Queer Fiction, Art, Poetry, and More.