Queer Fantasy Quad Sonnets

            Featuring a modified phrase by Cherríe Moraga

I.

My mother can separate anything
            divorcing cauliflower floret from stem
robes my father with ‘sir’ in the kitchen
            in bed she etches words on my back with
delicate fingers bestows butterfly
            kisses points out faces in the pine ceiling
tells me I laugh like my deadly aunties
            who taught her cursive and how to skin fish
with dull knives and to stay in bed before gram built
            the fire because Ojibwekwe get cold
I am too old to sleep with my mother
            but bone chilled Ojibwekwe get lonely
tells me if I died she would die with me
            we’ve always had a flair for the dramatic


II.

We’ve always had a flair for the dramatic
            which is how I found myself on our front porch
not in like a Juno MacGuff chilling
            on Paulie Bleeker’s front lawn type of way
Elliot Page looking suave on a tiger
            rug chewing on a pipe magnificent
discarded living room set type of way
            unless maybe he came out during that scene
his mom howled and now he’s on the porch
            locked out of his house all because queer hurts
I don’t know what kind of girl I am
            is fine to say in the movies when your
mom is played by Allison Janney and
            you haven’t kissed any girls on the mouth.


III.

My friend Cherríe taught me to fantasize
            button up Ralph Lauren men’s dress shirts
fat biceps flexing under entwined poplin
            create queer ruptures in cis reality
stone butch babies kissing stone butch babies
            says when you turn her over and make love
she feels queerer than anything in that
            when she’s calling the shots extreme butch
style my desire deludes me
            I feign consternation and bat butch
eyelashes eroticize me vacant
            I don’t know what kind of girl I am
I smoke myself sick on the fire escape
            where have all the sissy butches gone


IV.

I feel queerer than anything in that
            tight tight sports bra the one that squeezes my sides
makes a white man in Target call me
            sir and then ma’am and then settle on dyke
survey the dermis for gender markers
            I could smooch him in that checkout line
his mouth agape like he’d seen the ghost
            of Pornhub past and it was a fat butch
buying box mac & cheese and strawberries
            dreaming of unsheathing pith from cortex
sucking on flesh from Driscoll clamshells
            saying naughty filthy things like
paper bags please and yes I’d like a receipt
            don’t bag the strawberries—I’m hungry.

Aja St. Germaine is the essays editor at Honey Literary, a 501(c)(3) BIPOC women, queer, and femme literary arts organization founded by Dr. Dorothy Chan and Dr. Rita Mookerjee. They student-edited Dr. Debra Barker and Dr. Connie Jacobs' essays collection, Post-Indian Aesthetics: Affirming Indigenous Literary Sovereignty (Arizona Press, 2022), and is a Ronald E. McNair scholar. St. Germaine graduated magna cum laude from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire with a BA in English Critical Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.