"A Drag Queen Is Like a Poem"
in the same way that a drag
queen is like a woman
except of course that the woman
has real breasts while the drag queen
unbuttons her blouse
to reveal the realistic breast form
for cross dressers she's ordered
like alligator shoes from the Gucci catalog.
But then it's not so much shoes
that matter when talking
about poetry as it is the hair
and jewelry and the way
the lipstick has been applied.
Any teenage girl can tell you
that a good poem needs
to wear a short skirt if she
wants the boys to notice,
and that eye shadow can say
just as much as the subtle shadings
of anything Keats or Eliot
ever wrote. The truth is
it's all about truth
and beauty, or what passes for it,
and so there will always be someone
to argue it doesn't matter
what sprouts between
your legs like so much moss
between the paving stones. You can
always just pad or shave
or powder. You can strap
on foam tits and a ruber ass
to remind yourself that the language
of the body can always
be rewritten, that ultimately poem
is to the poet as drag
is to the queen, each word
fitting together like male
and female, like an infant
and his mother, two bodies,
two hearts, but one
coming out of the other.
Bruce taught me poetry for a summer. This isn't my favorite of his, but it struck me as I was looking at his book again.
Up in three and a half hours to head to Canada. Wish me luck!
