Drink Me Straight

S.D. Mullaney

Queer Is...

Why must you
wash me down?
Milk me up?

Throw sugar
at my face?
Why do you

disrespect
how I'm made
to be made?

You ain't sweet;
I ain't sweet.
Ain't yes ma'am,

ain’t any
way you like--
I should sting

going down.
Drink me straight,
beautiful--

drink me dark
as power outages
and pupils dilated.


S.D. Mullaney is a poet living in Jamaica Plain, MA, whose previous works have appeared in Anomalous, Hanging Loose, Pemmican, Hoi Polloi, Breakwater Review and the New York Review. Mullaney works at Mass College of Art and Design and UMass Boston, and he spends far too much time writing and re-writing his second collection of poetry.