When he told me I throw like a girl,
I became at age five a girl-girl,
or rather girl became me,
her rose-colored shame ribbon snaking
from my emptied hand
to cinch its bright bow at my neck,
yet I also became not-a-girl
as the shouldered fury lacking in
my girl-pitch rose like a voice,
like a new kind of weather
inside girl-me, its first cold drops
puddling deep in my flat girl-chest
unnoticed until it rose so high
the river overran its banks
and people started to call it
other things besides girl
except they still called it girl;
and when the baseball finally smashed
the window they said a hurricane did it,
and the hurricane had the name
of a girl but by then girl
had been said so many times
it was just another background
girl-sound, like distant rain.
Julien Strong (they/them) is the author of four books, including the poetry collections The Mouth of Earth (University of Nevada Press) and Tour of the Breath Gallery (Texas Tech University Press), winner of the Walt MacDonald First-Book Prize. Their poetry has appeared in many journals, including Poetry, The Nation, The Southern Review, Poetry Daily, River Styx, Rhino, and The Sun. They teach creative writing at Central Connecticut State University and live near New Haven, CT. For more about Julien’s writing: www.julien-strong.com
