Poetry: “Poster Child” by Carling McManus
Carling McManus brings us queer yearning with a thumping, rhythmic beat, accessing alliteration to bring us into an unfulfilled and all-too-familiar longing that reeks of adolescence.
She writes: “I studied the figures, pictured them / shirtless, sweaty, sleeping or showering, / the shape of something stirring, swelling.” Perfect as an entry to Pride Month, this urgent and relentless reminder of the sweet pang of unrequited teenage fantasy shows us just how far we’ll go to fit in, and just how far we’ll go to speak out.
We read their names aloud like a spell
as we taped them up on the walls:
Leo, Brad, JTT, their baby faces under
feathered, fallen bangs. More like girls
than their graphic slogans shouted:
HUNK, BAD BOY, PERFECT MAN
cut from Teen Beat Magazine, a sheen
so slick the walls looked wet. Eyes
like stopped clocks, they watched us
for as long as we wanted. Later, alone,
I studied the figures, pictured them
shirtless, sweaty, sleeping or showering,
the shape of something stirring, swelling.
Failing to find an ache, I thought
of my friends and the millions of girls,
each one extending a palm to a paper cheek,
warming the surface for a kiss. I wanted
to be flat like that: to be spread apart by small,
soft hands; to be smoothed against the walls;
to feel those hands kneading the sheets
under quilted comforters; to hear my name
cooed in bedrooms every shade of pink.
Carling McManus
Carling McManus lives on a mountainside orchard in West Virginia with her spouse and two border collies. Winner of the Gearhart Poetry Contest, selected by Benjamin Garcia, Carling’s poems have been published in Pleiades, Best New Poets, Cream City Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. A survivor of conversion therapy, Carling is an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ civil rights.
