Poetry by Bleah Patterson

   Christian Collins CC




my ex boyfriend asked why women can never stop talking about men in their art and I said
it’s because they give us no choice 

               My chest                                         still has the bees in it, 
                               their honey dripping                  from my rib cage, 
               their incessant buzzing, pinballing                     their stingers into me
  because                            I was 25 before I met a man who waited to hear a yes or a no 
filled me with them, each man                               a new hive deposited
                where I didn’t want it                because at 25 I was lucky     
               have mothers and mothers’ mothers 
                              who know men the way you know                      a bee 
who wants to sting you           cannot be stopped          and I 
have spent my whole life      still, trying not to draw attention to           my own     
                               blooming                             tricked myself into thinking 
                       I liked to be restrained because                  restrained was the only way 
                 it happened I                  tricked myself             
                                                              into thinking that the hollowing out 
    to make room              for the clattering





my queer awakening was realizing I spent just as much time thinking about a
pre-raphaelite side boob I’d seen at the museum as the butt of the guy who served nachos
at the movie theater

                               being southern meant Grammie 
                always said                                       girlhood was loving 
another girl       more than you could ever love a boy         
                and that wasn’t queer 
                                               that’s just that                spindle 
pricking inevitability     we were bundled hydrangeas, 
just one clump together of blossoms, if you picked one 
                                you had to pick us both 
                                                that weaving way daisy stems 
                 joint together to make a maiden’s crown 
two                        polished sets of nails grasped                 around 
                 each other, hers are ballerina mine are 
                                 flamingo and both                         have a speckled, 
                  glittered top coat glazed around                         jagged, 
bleeding cuticles                               and we get married
                  out back under the weeping                    mimosa tree 
she has to be the boy this time 
                              and she says why                 can’t we both just be girls 
but I’m not ready to go to hell                      yet so I              lower 
                my voice, straighten by back and say 
               I do, we swoon, we         kiss                           just like girls        
and when we’re tangled up                            at the end of another
day
                                             I think that if hell felt half this warm 
               it must not be so bad.




Bleah (blay-uh) Patterson is a queer, southern poet born and raised in Texas. Much of her work explores the contention between identity and home and has been featured by various journals including Electric Literature, Write or Die, Phoebe Literature, and Taco Bell Quarterly.
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