THE POETRY OF MICHAEL RULLI
Michael Rulli is a young queer poet on the verge of graduating from Binghamton University with a degree in Creative Writing. His poetry tries to touch on a mixture of humor and melancholy which derides from the loss of his parents and the absurdity that ensued thereafter. He found poetry and drag as a means to save his life. Thanks to the Queens and the Binghamton poetry scene, he was able to find strength and the courage to use his voice and art as a platform for change in his own life. When he isn’t writing he’s either watching reruns of RuPaul’s ‘Drag Race’ or strutting around in some couture he certainly couldn’t afford. A selection of his poetry and weekly blog posts can be found online at myblogisdropping.com.
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CHOCOLATE CRUNCHIES I knew what you were talking about. On that first spring weekend when Ralph’s finally opened for the season. Crocuses had been blooming for a few days and tulips you planted long ago, started to show us their colors. Pinks and yellows. “Do you want to get a sundae with me? You know the one with the chocolate crunchies at the bottom?” I still smelt the Smirnoff from a few nights back, when I told you no. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Now I plant my own tulips for you, and I can never get that sundae again. I knew what you were talking about. I just didn’t want to be seen with you. Your drop foot, your stringy hair, your yellowing skin. I didn’t want people to know you were my mother. My mother should be beautiful, my mother should be able to walk, now I just wish my mother was alive.
How alone you must have felt, up in your room, with a liter hidden under your bed. I’m sorry I didn’t know any better, but now I do. I can still turn back the time…can’t I? I can still walk down the road with you, and you can point out the flowers you’d love to grow. We can still float by the pool, or feed the koi fish. Your carpet doesn’t need to smell of dried blood. We can paint the bathroom gold like you always wanted, and afterwards I’ll pay for the sundaes this time—just with your credit card.
I’m sorry I wouldn’t walk with you that day, and all the other days. I know you went by yourself and now I know that ice cream doesn’t taste as good when you’re all alone.
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FAKE TITS - BIG BALLS - NO TALENT I think I’m in love with a lesbian, and as a gay man you can see how this could be problematic. She dreaded, not because she’s fearful but because her hair is like tangled rope. I bald, not because of chemo but because of boredom. We are opposites, most would say. I tall, she short. I a fag, she a dyke. I throw on fake tits, she has big balls Neither of us have any talent. We’re an unlikely duo, but its 2015 and we can raise our booking fee if we market ourselves a brother-sister act I the brother-sister, she the sister-brother. Two ends of gender and sexuality that no one saw coming. When either of us walks into a room they know who we are. They know what we stand for. They know our sexual preference. But together, it’s slightly more unnerving, even unappealing. People can handle a gay or a les but a gay and a les together, who take shots of Jameson and listen to Abba are simply too much. We love coffee, and I love her constant supply of cigarettes. She knows that I like to call myself Faguette, and always pronounced it like baguette. She knows why I cry, and stare at the moon with longing. I know why she loves the bitter cold of Binghamton. She yells at straight men who don’t understand me, and I do nothing to return the favor…but that’s okay because she knows I would if there was something to return. I love this dyke, and I never thought I’d see the day.
Perhaps times really are changing.
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WHO ARE WE? She is a monster that walks the streets at night. She howls at the moon and blasts Cher as she kills. What you think she can’t kill because she’s beautiful? Well I think you’ve seen too much.
She is what keeps me awake, and who I see on used makeup remover wipes—sprinkled across my vanity.
She’s kept dormant by love but awoken by grief. She’s alone and scared and keeps her claws sharp.
She comes from suburbia and forced baseball practices. She comes from Barbies owned by older sisters and crushes on all the other boys. She comes from Smirnoff hidden in Kool Aid, and Budweiser cans hidden behind the pool. She comes from manicured lawns by a mother with manicured fingers and a father that hated little boys in little dresses. From grandparents down the road, but a sense that he didn’t belong. That same sense that all the other little boys in little dresses feel.
She is me and I am coffee breath, and weird stomach noises. She tries to hold out from food long as she can each day to keep from bloating. I am creaking leather jackets and occasionally a cup of tea. I am an avid gender neutral bathroom seeker and constant hypocrite. I’m often lazy, but I come from strong, grudge-holding, German blood. I come from a family that broke too soon.
So who is she?
Why is she the moon I look at through my blinds and think, are you there mom? With candles burning and Patsy Cline wailing. Goodnight Moon, I want to leave you behind but I don’t think I’m ready yet. I come from you. That’s how I became the werewolf in heels and how I became a monster that howls for the ghost of a woman in the night sky. That’s who she is, that’s who we are.
