Boys

I listened to the music
meant for girls.

I tried to sing
like a girl.

Fists up against pa,
I graduated to ten-year-old,

was arrested for B&E,
called blondie

by the arresting officer
of the K9 unit,

& when asked
if I was a fan of dogs

I looked at the cop
& said I was a cat man.

/

The wind opened
westerly gulls high

above a stranger’s porch
we had been sleeping under.

Each in a wet pair of trunks
and swallowed by the drink,

we thought about each other
but uttered nothing

until I asked for the lip balm
& pressed it to my mouth

where it became the begging
of our unusable grief

until somebody said
hey look at that lipstick.

Derek Thomas Dew (he/she/they) is a neurodivergent, non-binary poet currently earning an MFA in poetry. Derek’s debut poetry collection Riddle Field received the 2019 Test Site Poetry Prize from the Black Mountain Institute/University of Nevada. Derek’s poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, and have been published in a variety of journals, including Interim, Twyckenham Notes, The Maynard, The Curator, Two Hawks Quarterly, Ocean State Review, and Cathexis Northwest Press.