Menu
This poem is a response to an online quiz with the same title. It takes lines from a couple of songs by Metric, which happened to be stuck in my head around the time of writing, from Conyer Clayton’s poetry collection But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (2022), which keeps returning to me since I read it, and from Billy-Ray Belcourt’s remarks about utopia at a virtual event. ‘6 questions to know if you’re bisexual’ is a love poem that seeks utopia within the confines of our culture’s need to define.
Have you ever had a crush on someone who is the SAME gender as you?
I love my best friend. & my best friend’s best friend.
& the dormant orchid on my kitchen table, fragile, full
of potential.
The ways we lean towards the sun.
How often are you attracted to people of the SAME gender as you?
The earth moves 365 times around our sun, or I
open my eyes & my body accordion folds, unto itself, into you, reach.
Help I’m alive as in I’m open. My arms
outstretched for you. I can give
you the sun, but I can’t find my oven mitts.
So how does a walk sound for now. I have soup
I’ll put in a Tupperware to send you home with.
My energy poured into something
to flow through you.
I want to share nutrients.
How often are you attracted to people with a DIFFERENT gender than you?
Help I’m alive but I’m breathing underwater. My arms outstretched
and so they’re not swimming. Not treading water.
Lift me & bring me to the surface light so we can kiss.
or watch them kiss. I would pretend to drown
in hopes of CPR but I value consent too much.
I value you too much.
no one believes me
no one believes me
no one believes me
T/F: I would kiss a guy
on the surface of the sun. Until
we become ash
and float outside gravity.
I would kiss you until we are nothing.
My Body Accordion shriveled & gone.
T/F: I would kiss a girl
below, in a coral reef where only the clown fish have questions. I
never want to breathe again. Help
I’m alive as in I’m breathing. I’m holding.
no one believes me
no one believes me
no one believes me
I would date…
purely to hold your hand. To interlock fingers.
My largest organ gives me away – it blushes. Seeks to touch.
Utopia is the name we give to every room we feel more alive than dead in.
I want to share nutrients with you.
I want to become the soil the world walks on
next to you.
The quiz says I’m pansexual.
© Copyright 2023 long con magazine. All rights reserved.
longconmag@gmail.com
for updates on long con magazine & Collusion Books, including new issues, workshops, and submission calls.
We’ll email you less than once per month.
Why are we asking you to subscribe?
Over the past three years, we’ve relied on social media to spread the word about long con & Collusion Books—but as corporate social media become increasingly extractive and unreliable, we’d prefer to keep in touch with you directly.