Poem of the Week: Kamilah Aisha Moon

 

Photo by Rachel Eliza Griffiths     

 

Dressing Down

--to Shirley Q. Liquor, Drag Queen in Blackface

When you're gay in Dixie,

you're a clown of a desperate circus.

Sometimes the only way to be like daddy

is to hate like him--

hope your brothers laugh

instead of shoot,

wrap a confederate skirt around your waist.

You traded glamour for nasty tricks--

dethroning your mammy's image for dollars

that will never cover so much debt,

unraveling years she lost

loving you for a living.

  

-Kamilah Aisha Moon  

Used by permission.

  

Kamilah Aisha Moon's work has been featured in several journals and anthologies, including Harvard Review, jubilat, The Awl, Poem-A-Day for the Academy of American Poets, Superstition Review and Gathering Ground. Her poems and prose have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Lambda Literary Prize and the Audre Lorde Publishing Triangle Award. A native of Nashville, TN, currently living in Brooklyn, NY, Moon is the author of She Has a Name (Four Way Books) and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. She is currently a finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry and the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry from the Publishing Triangle.

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