On Becoming a Man

By Sara Femenella

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For years Quinn sat in a gymnasium 
full of post-pubescent girls 
so holy with hormones 

that his own girlhood 
must have felt unrelenting, 
his Catholic schoolgirl uniform 

a false cognate of cosplay 
while a priest ordained all those 
bodies perfect in their own images. 

I admit, when he first came 
to me, I loved the girl in him. 
His she/her an abandoned bird’s nest, 

whose beauty lies not only 
in its painstaking construction 
but in how easily that labor is left. 

Quinn wanted to know 
what makes a good man, 
as if I could teach him 

what he can better teach me. 
His boyhood has been there 
all along, a revelation

beneath all the bullshit, 
a transcendent knowledge 
that when he pronounces

his manhood his words will 
emerge glittering formed
by the vestiges of dead legislations 

and the joy of knowing what 
he has always known. His manhood 
will rhyme with nothing.

A brand-new word, unlike anything
we’ve ever heard. We’re listening.
Ready to repeat after him.

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Sara Femenella has recent or forthcoming poems in The North American Review, Palette Poetry, Pleiades, The Journal, The New Orleans Review, Denver Quarterly, Salamander, and Seventh Wave, among others. Her book, Elegies for One Small Future, has been a finalist or semi-finalist for a number of contests, including Autumn House Press' Poetry Prize and The Waywiser Press's Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son.

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