Effete Poem

I will never write like Edwin Denby.
I wouldn’t change a thing about him.

Keep being Edwin, Edwin, as effete
as a dance critic for the New York Herald Tribune.

Is being effete something you can practice, like dance steps
in private when a prima did them first?

If so, I’ve had lots and lots of practice.
I started by brushing my hair on the bus,

Two-year-old hair on a twelve-year-old head.
Then a man, a stranger, said, “I know you, boss,

you’re always brushing your hair.”
Not quite a “Put that back.” Certainly a “Hey, you,”

With a cunty something tailing the sentence like an unmarked car.
If I ran away from him, I must have done so effetely.

I ran all the way to 2011.
On the way, I passed Le Château. Remember Le Château? No, you don’t.

You’re not effete enough.
I passed uploaded videos of Eartha Kitt,

Quentin Crisp, Fran Drescher, and the female gremlin.
By then nothing seemed very effete.

I lived with a man who liked it when men
called him boss. They did it when he pumped his gas.

He said it made him feel adequate:
right size, right shape. Even the hair on his hands was right.

Some effete people keep hair on their hands.
Some effete people are women.

Scientists say: it’s the phytoestrogens in the 
water supply, in Hamilton, Ontario.

Critics say: she wanted a nice life,
in Passaic, with durable consumer goods.

Are these all images of money?
I’ll never have been born to it, Edwin,

As a diplobrat in Tianjin. At the time of my
death, a Swiss boyfriend will not

describe me as a “modern who smoked 
opium with Cocteau.”

I’m not effete enough. 
I must do something about that. 

Copyright © 2024 by Kay Gabriel. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 25, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“Against the backdrop of the anti-trans panic, I wrote this poem with an eye to vilified gender positions. [It] makes its observations in part by engaging with the poet and dance critic Edwin Denby, a friend and mentor to poets, including Frank O’Hara and Alice Notley, and lifelong partner to [filmmaker and photographer] Rudy Burckhardt. Le Château was a Canadian clothing chain. Take this test to determine if you’re effete—results may surprise.”
—Kay Gabriel