Dyke Sonnet

After that dress I wore to shreds in 2017

I was wearing an ankle-length dress
the first time a man leaned out of his white
pickup truck and yelled “DYYYYYKE!”
at my sunburnt face. Each of the five Y’s
bounced off of my head, landed at my feet.
Rubbed against my legs, curled their tails, followed
me like a slink of cats on the sidewalk.
Curious, how quickly I took to them.
That was the moment I stopped trying
to render myself discrete, hollow.
Stopped letting the wind howl through me.
Because the people who fear me the most
can still spot me from a mile up the road.

Jacqui Zeng's poems appear in Black Warrior Review, Up North Lit, and Aquifer, among others. She received her MFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and now lives in Chicago, IL.