so when anyone asks me if i’m gay i keep repeating no i wish ha ha
only the one time i just say yeah i am i dunno why
except maybe sometimes you blurt out your green-banana secrets
to persistent twelfth-grade lesbians
when they ambush you behind the student center
so i tell them yes and then later after some kissing i tell my lovely crush
i’m actually straight so this isn’t gonna work
and if i had a do-over i’d remake myself instead of knitting
a coward scarf in stripes of burgundy and cream
but the school rules include a stipulation
where we are required to disclose our “alternative sexualities” to dorm parents
to be adequately surveilled and i’m so worried about being impeccably good
or perfectly invisible that i would rather hide forever
than interrupt Mr. H to announce um I like a girl so when she comes
over can you make sure we don’t kiss ok thank you so much
an impossibly mortifying scenario
and to top it off when the guy who trusts my qualifications as president
asks me the earring question after chapel i can’t remember left or right
right or left i can only say i don’t know i don’t know i don’t know
Catherine Weiss (they/she) is a poet and artist from Maine, currently living in Western Massachusetts. Their poetry has been published in BOMB, Sixth Finch, Tinderbox, DIAGRAM, Up the Staircase, Fugue, and Taco Bell Quarterly. Catherine is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Big Money Porno Mommy, from Game Over Books in 2025. Catherine has also appeared in petrichor ten, thirteen, and twenty. WEB
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