I grew up
believing that therapy didn't exist.
That trauma was a typology of tall tales
and tremors,
someone trying very hard
to forge truth apart from fiction,
truth a part of fiction.
Like the man said,
I started off believing all men were equal.
Like the man said,
I now know that's the most unlikely thing to have ever been.
Because gay boys are better.
Gay boys are braver.
And so gay boys are easier to traumatise.
Gay boys are easier to break.
Gay boys are better.
More brittle,
less breathy,
easier to disbelieve.
No one believes this poem.
No one believes what it suggests.
No one believes what it insinuates.
No one believes that it really was that bad at Eunoia.
Hey, don't be like that, Kevin.
Don't make this difficult for us.
We like you.
We like seeing Kristang in print.
We want to make money off you.
And it's not the work per se.
We already said it:
the work is good,
great, actually.
The themes are strong.
The interest in the community is there.
And it's not that we really care if the feedback aligns or not,
or if you have an anthology call ready to go,
or even all the CV pages, and all the workshops, and all the respect in the world:
It's not for us.
You're not for us.
You're just not the right fit for us.
Nothing you say or do will ever make you the right fit for us.
You don't interact directly with me
but you know I'm there.
And you are there.
That's the problem.
Don't be such a child, Kevin.
Don't be such a prat.
You know how this works:
you and the stories you bring,
and the questions, and the contestations, and the language,
and the memories.
The reveries.
The challenges to the peace we've sought to press and publish into existence
for 36 years.
It's not the work.
It's you.
Take it personally, so that when you react badly nobody will trust you ever again.
Put down your pen,
your laptop,
your Submittable.
Take more shirtless pictures.
I like those.
They fit into my sense of
all you will ever really be.
I know you have something to prove.
But you can't prove anything.
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