Danielle Rose: This Queer Body
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
the word “embrace” was born of holding things upright like a pillar or this idea
that virginity / is to not know what to do with this body
its holes its implements used to grasp / & i am a newness
like birth but nestled within an after / like how seeds spread
& they will become more seeds / grow more stamen
because plants understand how to fuck / they just wait
for the sun to be just right / & then they bloom
alone i am coal / wire / chicken feed scattered
on a barnyard floor / her hands grasp & i am consumed
pecking / the way smoke moves through light
both intangible & ultimately abiding / ceasing
this body its plugs & sockets / & she is filling
because this isn’t taking / this is bracing me
against her & then not falling
in 9th grade i taught myself to pretend to be comfortable pissing in a urinal
after a friend called me faggy because i elected
to piss in a stall the answer was to pretend
that i was an eroded riverbank a way to make dangerous rapids
be dangerous somewhere else & then lie about it
this is how i learned how to lie like my mother
or the way i whisper grocery lists in the middle of fucking
to forget is brutally germanic one must un-get
like when a boy found a bracelet & it was taken away
this is not loss it is a way to remember differently
like how proud i was pissing in a urinal not the little boy
crying over costume jewelry to think something
had been accomplished when nothing
was ever accomplished
when heraclitus claims that “things keep their secrets” he likely means an abandoned library or the way a mother is also a judge
but my body is like an overloaded dishwasher leaking through the floorboards—this is why boyhood almost killed me—because these things must be weighed—such as how much i am spilling & what i still contain—because these things aren’t secrets they just hide behind me like unruly children—i will admit i am afraid of what i do not know like how to stop spilling—perhaps this is why i seek shelter in books—& these forgotten ways i sit in judgement of myself—if heraclitus is also a coward i may be forgiven—like me he won’t admit he does not know & ignores his own secrets spilling
if i am like achilleus it is in how this queer body believes itself both rageful & constructed to appease
which is at first a likeness / in how he knows that anger is inside him & he wants it to leave / like an empty hilltop or how soldiers cheer for him as he rides his chariot / & this is a sexual metaphor / i do not share it’s belief in glory i am just a waivering reflection / i do not fasten myself to a chariot & then do battle / but bodies like ours are so fragile they scrape & become ways to desire armor / they become a weaving of all the lies we tell to our bodies / because achilleus is a liar / he was never dipped in the styx / never anointed & burned away / he just loved & fucked & fought for something & then died / if this queer body curved like a horizon i might understand his cheering / but i am masonry / the beginnings of a solid foundation / these small gods to make myself home
Danielle Rose lives in Massachusetts with her partner & their two cats. She is the managing editor of Dovecote Magazine & used to be a boy. Her recent work can be found in Luna Luna Magazine, Homology Lit, Turnpike Magazine, Kissing Dynamite & elsewhere.
