???

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.