Poems for a Homophobic Maria.

Earlier this summer, my partner and I had the unfortunate luck of getting street-harassed by one of “our own” ( we are both Portuguese-American women, as was the cunt who thought it appropriate to challenge our queerness). Fortunately for us and the poetry-loving world, we turned our anger and disappointment into spoken word, processing and documenting our experience as Luso women-loving women the best way we know how.

And should the Maria who was ballsy enough to gay-bash us on Ferry Street somehow, some way stumble upon this post, I hope you not only get the worst case of of mouth sores ever but that you actually feel the deep deep shame you should.

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While Filming A Documentary on the Intersections of Queerness and Luso-American Cultures

by Cindy Goncalves

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2018

I imagine this woman’s face,

Grinning at her ability to insult the obvious

targets

In the most mediocre,

Third-grader-just-discovered-ya-mama-jokes-and-still-thinks-they’re-funny

Kind of way

When she takes it upon herself to yell

falta a pila,

the dick is missing

as my partner and I walk down Ferry Street

hand-in-hand.

You need to know that

We didn’t hear her say this when it happened

We heard it for the first time

when the director shared the footage

in our group chat.

Asked

Did anyone pick up on this?

How upset she must have been

when the freaks let her speak and

passed up the opportunity

to feel less than,

anomaly,

disowned by the community that

taught them the value of the bate-o-pé

and roasted green peppers with sardines.

I replay the clip

over and over,

this woman’s voice more familiar every time.

She is Dona Rosa from the fish market,

Lourdes selling Real Madrid knock-offs on Monroe Street.

Teresa in the front pew.

She is the woman at the party that

Tells my brother he looks just like my dad

And tells me I look just like my brother.

I listen to this woman’s voice

Over and over

And imagine what would’ve happened

if we had heard her.

Hear my partner snap

In tongues learned from her grandmother

Channeling her father’s rage

In the face of fools minimizing love

to body parts,

to brown eyes and big penises.

I imagine myself frozen

in the middle of what I practiced avoiding for years,

catatonic beneath the button up

and low fade that gave this woman the confidence

to strip me

of mine

Find enough strength to

hold my lover back as she

questions how the woman knows

neither of us has one

claps back about the

purple dick in our bottom drawer

and how it’s still not missing

when our hands become compasses,

fingers guiding each other

in high tide.

I pull her in tighter,

remind her of what she said earlier,

that our people will never care

to know us

the way we

know them.

We stumble away.

I drive silently,

Listen to her say all the things

I couldn’t,

Prouder than ever to love her

And the woman her mother

says she shouldn’t be.

Consider the privilege

Of being able to walk away annoyed

But unscathed in an age of civility.

We get home and

shower together –

always together.

Run our hands down waists and up spines,

Across chests and shoulders

Over bodies

rooted in two places,

nurtured in none,

finding home in scarred knees

and belly folds.

Bodies

hot, soft,

Melded together by morning,

Whole enough for each other

Missing nothing in between.

Ten things I Never Got to Say to The Homophobic Portuguese Woman On Ferry Street

by Marina Carreira

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2018

1. A dick is as useful as a steak knife in a soup bowl.

2. I’d bet my month’s salary that you are still angry over never kissing Adelaide by the lake after that long bike ride.

3. If it’s one thing our kind prides itself on, it’s our ability to raise “filhos educados.” Were you sick the day your mother passed down this lesson? Did she talk too fast and you missed it? Are you proud of being malcriada?

4. It must be nice to don the armor of cisheterosexuality. Do you take it off at night before bed? Is it temperature regulated? Is it bulletproof? If I throw a bag of dicks at it, will it break?

5. Speaking of dicks, I do have one. Purple and clean and safe and always ready in my armario bottom drawer.

6. Bae makes me cum the way an onda breaks onto shore during bandeira vermelha. I’m sorry you’ll never know this life at sea.

7. I pray that your husband never leaves you for another woman. Or another man. But if he does the latter, you can’t scream at him what you did at me. You’re going to have to tell him that pussy is missing. And if that’s the case, maybe take your own advice.

8. May your children never inherit your cruelty.

9. More often than not, “my people” are not my people.

10. Fado is more state than sound. No one knows this more than a Portuguese woman.