WEBVTT

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This is a poem that
plays with gender,

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plays with time and
space because there

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are any number of places
where it could happen.

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A poet critic friend of mine
opined in a book review--

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that had nothing to do with me--

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that perhaps the stance
of the young woman poet

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was sitting, looking inside
and into the room in which she

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was seated, whereas the
young male poet tended

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to be looking out the window.

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And I think that was just
a little trigger that

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started this poem happening.

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It's called "The Boy."

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"Is it the boy in
me who's looking out

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the window while someone across
the street mends a pillowcase?

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Clouds shift.

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The gutter spout pours rain.

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Someone else lights a cigarette.

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Because he flinched, because
he didn't twirl around,

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face them, because he didn't
hurl the challenge back.

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Fascists?

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Not faggots, swine.

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He briefly wonders, if he
were a girl, he writes a line.

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He crosses out a line.

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I'll never be a man, but there's
a boy crossing out words--

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the rain, the linen mender,
are all the homework

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he will do today.

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The absence and the
privilege of gender

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confounded him--
soprano, clumsy, frail.

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Not neuter, neutral
human, and unmarked--

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the younger brother in the
fairy tale except, boys shouted,

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'Jew', across the park to him
when he was coming home from

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school.

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The book that he just
read about the war,

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the partisans is less a
terrible and thrilling story,

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more a warning, more a code,
and he must puzzle out the code.

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He has short hair,
a red sweatshirt.

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They know something
about him, that he

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should be proud of, that's
shameful if it shows,

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that got you killed in 1942.

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In his story, do the partisans
have sons and grandparents?

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Is he a Jew more than he is a
boy who'll be a man someday?

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Someone who'll never
be a man looks out

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the window at the rain
he thought might stop.

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He reads the sentence he began.

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He writes down something
that he crosses out.

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