“I Took a Nap On the Floor Today”

By Andie Simpson

I don’t ever write about being Queer.

If I scoured the pages for a

minimum wages worth of words

fit enough at all ages,

to describe the sensations,

prescribe names and rages,

guess it’s of times and places,

You can oils literally come out

blanketed in blank pages. The first time I felt at peace

with being Queer, I was dancing to

“Born This Way”, dressed as Buddy Holly

on a Halloween night in the Castro

surrounded by perfect-

and I mean “perfect” strangers.

Pushed back repeatedly awestruck,

bushwhacked, defeated my star struck.

Let’s ask ourselves:

“Andy, how are we nowadays”?

And I’ll reply,

“Is that ‘Andie’ with and ‘IE’ or a ‘Y’, because ‘nowadays’,

and ‘How are we’, tend to rely heavily on the answer to that question”.

I never write about being Queer,

so here, forever-now,

I’ll tout and drawl, slowly I’ll crawl

through the words and the rest,

reach into the crevice created

deep in my chest

by years of destructive nouns and caustic verbs.

I will always fight to and for being Queer.

So the answer to your question:

in a hope that it’s suggestion

makes a moat surrounding my

astounding gender queer addendum.

Pushed back full stacks

of another open season to the forest

Of fodder for my own damn

panic attacks  b

“How are we doing nowadays, Andie”? I ask.

“Me”? I reply.

“I’m writing about being Queer”.