Poetry By Amara Tiebout

Will Fisher CC




My Name Is Not Amanda 

It’s AH-MAR-AH.

No, not Laura. 
Though Laura is my favorite 
of all the wrong names I’ve known.

In Nigeria, my name is holy--
translates to God’s grace. In Uganda, 
it means God is enough. In rural Appalachia, 
my name is AH-MAR-AH.

In rural Appalachia, God spoke from the rum-punched 
shine of a boi’s lips. The day they brought me home
to meet their parents, their mother erased me 
with one look. I didn’t want to speak for years. 
Being queer means sometimes not knowing 

the right name. What do I call the girl 
who taught me to masturbate? 
The youth group that prayed 
for my sweaty salvation? 

The best friend who showed me 
lesbian porn? I never stopped
thinking about those women 

kissing, long hair tangled 
like jump rope.  

My name is AH-MAR-AH.

I’m still learning how to introduce myself 
instead of accepting what the soft 
cartilage of your ears misheard.

How many best friends have I loved 
without knowing? 

Without the right words, 
       just our names

​




​I Named My Foster Dog Bodhi After Patrick Swayze

As a young adult, I told people I was swimming in my mother’s womb
when she slow-danced with Patrick Swayze on the set of Dirty Dancing.
The truth has a different shape—Mom had just given birth to my older
brother. It was 1986. She worked in a shop that sold crystals and handmade
wool sweaters. My sisters were unpacking boxes in a new farmhouse
in a tie-dyed town with one stoplight. Dad couldn’t find work until
Patrick Swayze insisted on doing his own stunts in a scorching September,
on a film set 45 minutes away from my elementary school. Dad became
the massage therapist for a movie that no one knew would become
legendary. Scenes that taught many of us the choreography for lust: Baby’s
​open mouth watching Johnny’s sweat hit the floor; Penny, Johnny,
and Baby, pressed in a hip-to-hip triangle, practicing tension and form,
while my dad, somewhere off camera, readies for a misstep. As a child,
I was convinced Dad had the strongest hands in the universe. He could have
cupped the Grand Canyon, his veins running rivers through the Earth. Mom
once reminisced over candied yams: how she waltzed up to Patrick
Swayze’s room and demanded that he attend the wrap party. How he smiled
a yes. How Mom invited him to dance. The tide of her could have pulled
the Colorado River off course. I like to picture it. Mom’s arms around
Patrick’s marble shoulders. “Kim, you’re leading,” he teases. Watermelon
blushes her cheeks. Patrick sways like a dance instructor and dips her low.
Mom’s red curls brush the floor. Joy gymnastics from her mouth as he dips
her again, and again, and again. My partner says I flirt without trying. Mom
must know something about this.



​

Amara Tiebout is a queer writer and editor from Washington DC. She edits medical research during the day. She believes, with her molten core, in a free Palestine, sex positivity, healthcare and abortion rights for all genders and bodies, and good coffee. The first poem she ever published was nominated for Best of the Net. Her work has been published in the Pinch Online Journal, Nimrod International, and HAD. You can find her anxiously posting on Instagram like a true millennial (@amarart).