“BOY COMING OUT GAY GOING FAR TO LADY WAY TO QUEER,” a Poem by Rickey Laurentiis
From the Collection “Death of the First Idea”
I confess the Trans is dangerous. It leans provocation
On the teeth of the mind: an idea, to kill all other ideas? like Category,
Order, Line? Suppose the Problem of the Century still
be the Color Line since the Problem is, increasingly, the line?
I walk my far lyric to self. Was I gay or trans, when? Will
I Rickey or Key? The Danger be if Trans willingly tear up and confuse all
Surfaces, & neat embankments and leveéd cities sufficiently
keeping one hood from another, what else? If you Look
at me liking what you See— are you Gay? Fag? Distinctions Bi? What am I
going toward once a Boy-going-gay (never Man) coming forth to Lady,
(few deny) for Queer’s umbrella (gained) for Dreamed
Queen (all gained) to What else? Tho if I be Queer should Women who snarl
Love at me be lesbian, are Men who throw want at me straight? Carl,
I was gay my whole twenties & do I miss it but I miss the staying gay
after tongues kiss, that little Bottom Shame glossed in that name, Bottom.
Now Gay to Queer Miss to Dream to Trans*, all nice. Tho trans will suffice.
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Excerpted from Death of the First Idea by Rickey Laurentiis. Published September 2025 by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Rickey Laurentiis
Rickey Laurentiis
Rickey Laurentiis was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, to love the dark. Boy with Thorn, their debut book, won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Levis Reading Prize, and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Other honors include fellowships from the Lannan Literary Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics at the University of Pittsburgh.
