To all their queer queen besties
I want to thank RuPaul and every queen on every episode of Drag Race
Also, that dollar store cashier I ran into with my mother in small-town Massachusetts
who actually thought I was RuPaul and kept calling me, “Miss Honey.”
Thank you, Oprah, her close friend designer Nate Berkus.
I extend condolences to the lover he lost when the tsunami hit Sri Lanka.
I also want to thank Walmart and the trans person who worked
behind the register when my mother worked there as a greeter.
When eventually she was fired for wearing women’s clothes,
to my shock, my mother said, “That’s unjust and I think it’s discrimination.”
I want to thank that person wherever they are.
I want to thank that mixed-race lesbian Josie on Top Chef
I want to thank every LGBTQIA person on every show that my mother
watched religiously, because each and every one of them
in one way or another
prepared my mother at eighty-four years old for the queer art catalogue I was a part of
that I brought home to show her called Cast of Characters.
Holding my breath, I handed it to her, asked her to guess of all the images
which was mine.
She saw the word queer first, “Why do you call yourselves that? That’s
like saying you’re Niggers.”
I tried to explain the concept of reclaiming language used against us.
My mother refused to listen.
She thumbed through the images, eyes wide with wonder.
She knows I don’t usually show her stuff for many reasons.
She gave her opinion on each image.
“Ooooh this one with flowers,” she pointed. “I like this.”
The next was an image of a man with cock and balls out,
“I don’t like this one,” she said.
She persisted onto the next image.
“Pregnant butch,” she said out loud and giggled.
“A pregnant butch,” she said again as if fascinated by the idea.
“I don’t see yours, oh but here it is!”
She fastened on a blue and red watercolor of figures gathered in grief
titled, 6 times.
“It’s the family of Stephon Clark,” I explained. “That Black kid from Sacramento
police shot in the back six to eight times, unarmed in his backyard.
They said he was a burglar.”
“I wanted to paint the pictures of his family grieving because they had no voice
and were made invisible.”
My mother got quiet, mouthed something like a ha
Her eyes narrowed and full, like when I visit and we watch shows
about slavery together/like in Roots when Chicken George has to leave his
son at the crossroads to gain freedom.
My mother wants to cry but doesn’t.
She commands me to show the catalogue to my father.
Later she asks to take a picture because she wants to show my
ninety-year-old aunt.
In New York this year we are celebrating,
The 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots.
My queer friends complain about all the festivities as
“The monster that ate New York,”
But I say I’m excited by it all
If only because I can go home to my family
(Because of all of those queens and kings before me)
Marked safe.
WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF
FOR NTOZAKE SHANGE
The internet has transformed our grieving patterns
Everything comes and goes so quickly
After death there’s a tremendous outpouring and then a few
weeks later months years later nothing
I have come now to watch all who shaped me die
Never got to write about or even register Prince
Then Aretha
Ntozake
People without whom I couldn’t have formed my voice
My identity
I joke now there’s probably not a Black girl alive who came through
a theater program in the United States who hadn’t encountered
the work of Ntozake Shange
In fact, I know some University Theater Programs ban For Colored Girls
from being performed “Choose something else,” they say
because it’s been performed so much
I chuckle thinking about how many times Ntozake’s words were
used by Black girls as audition monologues for a theater
“And I will be presenting the lady in green/or the lady in yellow”
And then them skipping around the room talking about Toussaint Louveture
Or the infamous somebody almost walked off with all of my stuff
Or if they were really dramatic they might perform the lady in red
with the perils of Beau Willie Brown, a crazed Vietnam Vet
and that infamous last line
About how he dropped the kids out of the window
In our college production, I was the lady in blue
a character that was rather obscure in compare to the others
I remember the beginning of the choreopoem playing
childhood games and then being frozen while a woman came around
and tagged us awake “I’m outside Houston …”
“I’m outside Chicago …”
And “this is for colored girls who’ve considered suicide/but moved to
the ends of their own rainbows”
The play was such that you could memorize everyone else’s lines
I struggled initially with how to pronounce Ntozake’s name
and read her Black vernacular and slash mark punctuation
But it was like reading Morrison’s Beloved which I tried at least five times before
I understood but then the codes gave way to an ecstasy and understanding
Her words became mine
Even though I was a young suburb girl
And the kinds of male partner violence that Ntozake spoke of was foreign to me
Later in a conversation at her house she remarked she didn’t want
older women to perform For Colored Girls
As the words became too bitter in their mouths
A point we starkly disagreed on
But ’Zake’s words were the first to unlock an experience in literature
A pool, a mirror by which Black girls could see themselves
like Tubman
She freed a lot of souls
That said, she was a hero of mine
And so when I first had the chance to meet her
as an adult many many years after undergrad
I was honored and floored
A friend of mine from Boston managed her
I went to meet her at Nuyorican Poets Café
It was after her second stroke
And she was dancing with her hands and hair
Her arms were raised above her head and she moved wildly to the music
her dreadlocks with gold beads moved with her
Afterward we hugged and were like old friends or sisters
I saw her many times after that
Once she came to see me perform
And I couldn’t believe I was performing for the woman who’d given me words
that was a beautiful moment when my mentor became an equal
I don’t think I could ever impart what she’s meant
but I
