My mother never warned me of anything
never said “watch out for boys who
spit, or curse, or punch,”
never said “look for signs
that he needs to control you,”
never said “boys will be boys”
never said “beware of the brute strength
of big men.” Maybe she knew I was one of them
knew somehow there was a part of me
that would not woman. But still
when I wander off into the woods
with Joel at twelve—and his tongue is
rolling in my mouth like an avocado pit
and he pushes my head toward his belt—
then, his whole hands grasping
around the bone of my wrists,
he stops the bulging tongue
to say “I won’t let you go until you do.”
I try to look past the brown glimmer
of his eyes. He is smiling when he says it.
We are the same height, Joel and I,
our jawlines lean and sharp,
our eyebrows thick and wet from the heat.
I recognize myself in him. I shove him,
run barefoot through the woods,
pine needles digging their needling ends
into the bottoms of my feet. I feel the
sting of who we might become, Joel
and I, two men in the woods, one of us
a warning, the other a woman, a fleeing fire.
Mothers and Men
Stacey Waite is an associate professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and is the author of: Choke, Love Poem to Androgyny, the lake has no saint, and Butch Geography. Waite’s poems appear in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Cherry Tree, and Court Green. Waite’s newest book is a mixed genre text entitled, Teaching Queer: Radical Possibilities for Writing and Knowing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017).