Arden Eli Hill is a genderqueer (he or they) white writer from Louisiana. To preorder a copy of Bloodwater Parish (an exploration of gender, sexuality, race, and adoption in poems) forthcoming from Seven Kitchen's press, please email Arden at Arden@ardenelihill.com. Arden's recent and forthcoming publications include Hip Mama, Trans Bodies Trans Selves, Strange Horizons, and The Wellesley Review.
Listen to podcast interview: https://anchor.fm/melodie-rodgers/episodes/Arden-Eli-Hill--SOREN-LIT-Summer-issue-2021-e13uu02
I don’t see you as queer: erasure as compliment by Arden Eli Hill
You say you don’t see me as queer
You can’t see me. I’m the ghost
of a girl, gone in the glistening silver.
We wore white and rabbit fur,
kid leather gloves and tennis shoes
lost under the folds of our beaded gowns.
Too young to be brides, we processed
on a float drawn by a tractor
down litter-lined streets.
With boxes of Mardi Gras doubloons
and plastic beads by our sides,
we threw favors to the crowd.
I was the debutante
mouthing show me your tits.
I was the one pitching hard.
For Adopted Children who Look Like Their Adoptive Mothers by Arden Eli Hill
North, where what the river carries up of the ocean
has lost its salt, Where are you from?
repeats when you answer Bloodwater Parish.
The question loses its emphasis on you, focuses on from.
South, when you were young, no one asked.
Women said, I bet I know who your mother is.
You weren’t surprised that they were right every time.
Once though, maybe the first time, you misunderstood
and thought they meant we know who gave you up
when you were born. You scanned the room, curious,
but they weren’t talking about blood. They pointed
you back to the same old mother you’d always known,
her face as familiar as your father’s, as your own.
North, where what the river carries up of the ocean
has lost its salt, Where are you from?
is a question that implicates your mother
asked by people who have never seen her,
who want to know what it is you look like,
who want to know what it is she is.
What’s your mother is a question from home
too, asked by kids when you grew older
and adults weren’t always listening. No one
asked you what you were, being as you were,
so obviously, your mother’s.
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