D. Pless
Image by Dek0Art-Gallery on Pixabay
D. Pless lives in rural Western Washington. Her previous work has been published in The Canopy Review, Shift, and Kindred Magazine, among others. She was the winner of the 2021 Philadelphia Writers' Convention poetry contest and shortlisted for BMP Voices' 2021 National Poetry Month contest.
I always had a thing for the butch ones
I practice kissing the mirror at thirteen
it is cold and wet and tastes like toothpaste
my mind flickers as I imagine the face of a beautiful boy
long hair, soft lips, delicate curls that frame a face full of freckles…
breasts.
my neighbor gives me a key and says I can come over when she’s not there to watch TV
she gets cable, all the channels
I gorge myself on nonsense, Buffy reruns, Disney Channel original movies, Big Wolf on Campus
but
my eyes stutter as I see the girls in bikinis laughing in the sun on S Club 7
only on days when both my parents are gone and won’t be back for hours
when my sister is with friends
and no one has reason to wonder where I am
I let myself look
they’re so fucking happy
(Jo is my favorite. she puts hands to hips and scowls and I squirm.)
there is the thinnest veneer of heterosexuality to the show,
but it is just a gloss
I imagine the rest of the audience must be like me
desperate, confused, and frightened of how all the low-rise pants and crop tops make them feel
it’s obvious in retrospect, of course
but
I watch a movie where a girl chops off all her hair to impersonate her brother
in the big motocross race,
and a beautiful boy wants to kiss her whether she’s a boy or a girl
and
I’m hungry
(when my parents ask me where I’ve been, I say I take walks.
my neighbor never tells. my neighbor never told.
we still keep this secret, she and I.)
the first girl I kiss tastes nothing like my mirror
©2022 West Trade Review
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Stay Connected to Our Literary Community. Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Listen Here:
