???
What does gender mean anymore if it means
Everything to anyone and it can change
At any time without warning?
What does it mean to be a man
In a world without war, with
Machinery, and sperm banks?
What does it mean to be a woman when
A man like me can get pregnant?
What does it mean to be queer when
You’re married with children —
What do any of the things
We used to use as labels
Mean
In a digital age
Where absolutely everything
Can be edited?
I worked in the library in college, and
We had stacks and stacks and stacks
Of old notecards
Used as placeholders to give to a
Librarian to go and pull the book you wanted
From the stacks.
Now we have computers with apps and databases and
Help desk technicians.
The cards, and all their glory
Sit useless. In the way. A relic—
Part of our history.
It costs more money
To remove them, than it does
To keep them.
I don’t know if it means
Anything
To be queer nowadays
If you dare say it does —
You’re already a bigot to somebody.
What do we do
With the relics
What do we do
With the folks who refuse to update
Do we toss them out with Buck Angel or
Caitlyn or do we see that maybe
People aren’t like computers as much as we
Wish they were— they’re more like
Art and history, and each of us have a right
To be preserved.
Sometimes it feels like the progressive types
Want to leave everyone else behind
More than they want to get ahead, kind of like
Driving on the highway.
But who am I
Just your average heterosexual white guy
Who pees sitting down
With no plans to write
A musical about it.