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Within this imitation, I am seeking to emulate the way Danez Smith wrestles with
his own identity in [Insert] Boy. Although I only share my queerness and biological
gender with Smith, and not skin color, being in a certain mindset can set me
on a path of self-doubt and self-degradation, and seeking to fit a set of parameters
I’ve set beyond myself can create a serious case of cognitive dissonance. This one
poem, originally stretched out over 5 pages, was an attempt to come to terms with my identity and what I want from the world and myself. This poem is explicit.
hunger is this ballpoint pen
with boy fasting to spy pages without stain
and to be a boy
why is the girl that
but my boy isn’t
what did the girl do
what is left of me if
this boy is not
I cannot be a boy
hunger is girlish flesh
and boymouths drip starved
disparagingly akin to men
no girl
no girl in my
remaining boyhalf
no girl there
I looked for her
for a girl in there
but only then was a
boy in stockings and
panties and collars and shame
not the hot, wet shame, we mean
God, Pastor, Father shame
hunger is this solitude
that is the last boy, maybe
who fills his time left as
a man a princess
a poet an activist
some haraskinned queer powermonger
waiting to be dead in ’66
from smoking, loving the mirror men around him
because the poet he was coughed up New York
before himself and no one is both gay and dead
not even boys that skulk around
the graves
of the only men
I’ve ever not been
because they’re boys
and called
dead poets for a reason
they’re not gay anymore
they don’t count anymore
hunger is wide-eyed
the boy is as alive
as his fears allow him
afraid of shadows bears fathers
and the man he’ll be
lobotomizing his man
cauterizing his man
castrating his man
I am not already a man
I am not already a piglet rutting
and not even in another pig
at least I can see the mud
hunger is this muzzle
the boy let the girl put on him
because it suits them both, this silence
is so tight
on me and not
my kink and the little
man-flesh remnants
hanging from my boyframe
ribs stop me from handing
over the key to it
to you
to the men
that wouldn’t have me
because boys don’t top
and men aren’t gay anyway
hunger is having a seat at the table
and leaving it empty to listen to the starving
never feasting on voyeured pain
that makes me fake
for hearing it
my pale leather privileges
my cock
unmanly but manly enough to count
and this queer soul
that by the numbers
may as well be straight
how many more minutes until I get to speak
hunger is opportunity cost
on sucking cock
m4m economics
be this girl for three minutes (if he’s
nubile and nervous; the best
ones are) so I can strip
down and run around
meadows, mushroom forests,
where the faeries reside
I took that deal half-off
my man half
hunger is the definition of a boy
cute, and not
a man, weaker than that
when there are men
all the women are girls
so when there are boys
there are sometimes women and they act as men
hunger is being fucked raw
whether boy or woman
though there are no women here
only boys
and men aren’t gay anyway
so there’s no one to fuck
only this boy with eyes
over his shoulder
and man hanging off him
hunger is a bear’s shadow
capable of eating all the women
until it can define itself man
wouldn’t you
wouldn’t you wouldn’t you
wouldn’t you eat all the men
leaving corpses of poets
and this boy I want to be
untouched and also untouched
hunger is a list of demands
written in boyink
on unstained pages
I want to pick to be a boy
I want to not be collared
that I can pretend to be your equal
(a real boy kink)
I want to let you fuck me asexually
so that you can be a woman that is not just another man
because men and women are dead poets
but boys and girls are infinity
feminine, potent, subtle,
uncontested, insatiable,
and so incomprehensibly young
hunger is emboldened to smoke
to top men and die early
and leave behind a boy
Particular Words in a Specific Order 
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