Neurosis

What I like most in queer theory / is the reconfiguration / of the self: I have to drive / twenty-nine hours to California. By the end / I’ll be a new tan / burdock burr of experience / and neuroses. I’m going to add / two hours to the trip / to avoid Utah, the bathroom / laws. I’m no longer / who I was, I’m not / who I’ll be, but if someone / in Missouri, say, decides today’s / the day a clockable queer / doesn’t get to leave / the gas station alive, I’ll absolve / into my mother’s prayer. Will she use / my name, or will I become / the boy she raised? I’m not / yet a bullet hole, but the fear / of becoming one. What I hate most / in queer theory is nothing / is permanent, not even the self.

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Sara Hovda (she/her) is a transgender woman from rural Minnesota. She currently attends the MFA program at UC-Riverside while also working as an online entertainer. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines such as Frontier Poetry, Nimrod, and Nashville Review, among others.