On Becoming a Man

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.