Matthew Nisinson

Being a Man, Draft III

My gender, I think sometimes, is just shoulders; how I feel
My body from the shoulders inward. How I have to scrunch

 
Them in in public seating. A bull in a china shop, my gender
Is an obligation of restraint, responsibility not to trample

 
Others. But maybe I should start with Caesar, Gaius Iulius, 
I mean, and reading the Bello Gallico at fourteen. Cisalpine

 
And Transalpine Gaul were both Gaul, this or that side, more or less
Pacified. I am this. My teen body developed and I learned about bodies
 

And identity from Jack L. Chalker and Constable Odo. Hopping from one
Form to the next, being both, and beyond. Being the fog and the flame.
 

The self is not the body, but shaped by it. I am shaped by my body, I like
The shape. Sometimes I’d like to be taller or smaller, the shoulders

 
Stay. The study is self-directed, the shape ages and develops again.
In college I directed Rocky Horror and I cross cast the roles. Had to,
 

Never enough men trying out, would have loved to cast a male
Magenta or Columbia. The straight boys wanted to be Eddie. (Why
 

Are so many large adult men still boys? Why were the women better
At being all the boys?) I never wanted to be such meat, fleysh
 

Mit oygn. My gender is so often doing it wrong, being the cage
Not the contents or unable to separate self from cell. I want
 

To break my cage, sort what is me from what’s expected. Shoulder 
Past it. Learn to cry. My gender should be lacrimate, but I

 
Can’t bend the bar. Not so far. Fatherhood’s all tied up with 
Everything. Being a dad is like waking to something new
 

Each day. Being a man holding a little hand, rubbing my rough edges
Against the world. Hoping to draft myself again, become softer.