Michael McKeown Bondhus: Complicated
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Minx, Dad, Dildo
In 1998 my minxy poet friend
fucked me and then slapped a sticky red star
on my dick, saying “Now it’s tainted.”
We got dressed and went to a mostly queer
rave in the gentrifying part of Hartford
where we danced and I didn’t worry about being taken
for a slumming straight boy because she had a sock
in her jeans and hair like a dude.
All this sounds very plausible and I’m sure
some of it’s true Dad said. We were eating dinner
at George’s and trying to figure out
what to do about Mom,
but instead of helping I was, as usual,
making it about me and my complicated
relationship with my genitals. I thought you were gay,
Dad said, or was that later? Gay’s not the right
word, I said. I just prefer taking rather than giving.
Dad had circumcised me
so I’m not afraid to talk about my dick with him.
It’s all about the rectum he said knowingly.
He had that look he gets
when he’s playing Sudoku.
What about a woman with a strap-on?
Not that I’m trying to push you into…what
did that poet call it? The one who wrote
about being Jacques Cousteau.
Compulsory heterosexuality, I said.
The ceiling fan squeaked.
Adrienne Rich. The waitress brought
the food as I wondered if Mom
had ever fucked Dad.
This poem originally appeared in our ebook The Queer Body.
Michael McKeown Bondhus (previously Charlie) is the author of.of Divining Bones (Sundress, 2018) and All the Heat We Could Carry (Main Street Rag, 2013), winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. He received his MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and his Ph.D. in literature from UMASS Amherst. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Missouri Review, Columbia Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Poetry Ireland Review, and Copper Nickel. He has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers (UK). He is associate professor of English at Raritan Valley Community College (NJ). More at: http://charliebondhus.com.
