Kyle Lopez | i’m like dropping hints that i’m manic

Kyle Lopez is a poet from Montclair, New Jersey who lives in Brooklyn. He graduated from the College of William & Mary in 2017, where he won the Goronwy Owen Poetry Prize. Kyle is now a full-scholarship student of New York University's MFA program in poetry. He has received fellowships from NYU and the CubaOne Foundation, and was recently longlisted for the 2018 Cosmonauts Avenue Poetry Prize. His poems are published or forthcoming in The Florida Review, Argot Magazine (and Hargot, its hardcover edition), Cosmonauts Avenue, Capital Pride DC, GUM Magazine, and elsewhere.

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Also by Kyle Lopez: Pride Month

Previously in Glass: A Journal of Poetry: Rorschach

August 2018

Kyle Lopez

i’m like dropping hints that i’m manic

i’m manic: that means uptown downtown crosstown trains direct to one same place that means hop on head out hit it as packs of horned-hooved thoughts trample mind's swollen streets in the running of the bulls(hit): ask when i came out & i might say right before leaving to college & i might say dad told me to my face it wouldn't change anything & i might say mom cried, said zip for three days, but i won’t say i never came out & i won't say a family friend outed me & i won't say his name — let's call him snow — & i won't say snow assumed they been knew since that's what everyone assumes since that's what everyone's assumed before we knew the assumed before we knew pre-school dads branded boys like us the type you DON'T act like. before i knew we were a classic laugh like the aristocrats or in soviet russia joke cracks you or knock knock who's there? sissies, SISSIES our comedy truly never dries out damned spot ! out i say ! real talk, lady macbeth taught more about being a man than any real one has & when angela bassett spits the lines that snapped her weak-ass hubby all the way back i glow as though newly smacked by bouncing lil beady-eyed star ~cue INVINCIBILITY jingle~ & i hear the bulls running again & i’m Five & Faggy & Mighty ! no dads whisper about us in this time where minding yr wax counts for more, here parents hear no grown groans on sweetie-voiced boys’ swishy hands & sissies are the bees knees calves & feet & punchlines come fresh out the oven & we laugh along with you & those bulls keep on runnin’, honey

For added context and overall pleasure, please watch Angela Bassett spontaneously break out into a recitation of Lady Macbeth's "man up" monologue:

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