The Friday Poem: ‘reluctant heterosexual’ by Amanda Faye Martin

A new poem by Amanda Faye Martin.

reluctant heterosexual

one time i got snowed in with a guy
i thought i didn’t want to sleep with
but then he said something that felt true
like clarity could be simple
like things could be known
like picking fruit
in warm weather
and I thought:
oh god
let me in
let me point to things i could never name
let me open my mouth
and receive them
like
deep throating the idea of stability
yes:
i could die a little death like this
on my back
being fed words like
some greek god
receiving grapes
what i’m trying to say is
i slept with him
i let him throw me around
i fucked him in a chair
and his stupid single bed
maybe too many times
in some strange barter of body for access
trying to access
failing to
i didn’t love him
he told me he loved me
and i told him he didn’t know me
there was nothing to know
i was just a bunch of half-formed ideas
in a trench coat
pretending to be a woman

sometimes i wonder if my attraction to men
or at least a certain kind of man
whose mind feels like a church
or at least
some brilliant haven
is mostly about a desire to be carried into a world
that is different from my own
with sturdy mental architecture
forged from foreign supplies like

confidence
& what’s the word?
certainty.
yes –
it’s easy to come
i mean cum
in such a nice house

maybe i could love a woman
if i could ever bear to look into a mind
that reflects my own:
haunted, curious, malleable
harry potter staircases that shift
constantly
ideas lost to rooms you’ll never get to
how could anything grow here
in a house of forever collapsing walls?
(& yet –
things do
don’t they?
it’s just hard to believe
in this constant state
of doubt)

it’s not that i don’t respect women
in fact, i respect them more
i mean – we’re right
nothing is known
not ourselves
not the world
not each other
it’s just scarier to live with the actual Truth
and a lot less sexy
like
if the male gaze is about objectification
and pretending things are
what you say they are
the female gaze is just a bunch of women in a circle
looking down at our hands
realizing everything we’ve held
has turned to straw