WHEN I SAW TRUMP'S ANTI-TRANS CAMPAIGN ADS

by Janice Lloyd

I

I remembered the 1960s

when I would count the seconds

walking home from elementary school

until mom handed me my blue overnight bag

with my favorite flannel pjs and drove me

on Fridays to my girlfriend’s house.

How their home was like ones mom fantasized

about in Better Homes & Gardens magazine.

Upstairs had three bedrooms with full baths for kids,

and downstairs, off a marble foyer with a chandelier,

was a living room half the size of our house. 

How ladies in cocktail dresses and high heels

would sit straight-backed on the edge

of puffy sofas and chairs with their ankles crossed. 

Husbands in suits & ties would bring them drinks.

How we tiptoed by to gaze at elegance, respectability.

Her mom ushered us to my friend’s bedroom 

to play Candy Land or with Barbies.

II

Her younger brother John, alone in his room,

started screaming: No, Dad, please no. 

How my friend kept on playing with Barbie,

said, John wants to wear dresses, be called Suzy, 

and visit with the party guests. Dad gives him a shot,

lets him sleep it off so no one knows about him. How I lay awake 

in her poster bed that night wondering about John, 

went home the next morning, told mom.

She struck a match, lit a Tareyton cigarette,

said nothing. She started driving me 

to the skating rink to meet new friends. 

A few years later, she showed me John’s obit. 

No cause listed. We thought—suicide?

III

How I wish my friend and I could have played

dress up with Suzy the night of  her parents’ party.

Helped her put bright red lipstick on her lips.

Wear mascara.

Her favorite dress.

The Advocate, November 7, 2024

Janice Lloyd is a former journalist who spent her career at USA TODAY, is a married lesbian and writes poetry she workshops with other poets.

LIPSTICK

by Mary K O’Melveny

Col. Wang Yaping is a pilot in the People’s Liberation Army’s Air Force. She is a space veteran, now making her second trip into orbit. She is set in the coming weeks to be the first Chinese woman to walk in space as China’s space station glides around Earth at 17,100 miles per hour. And yet, as she began a six-month mission last week at the core of China’s ambitious space program, official and news media attention fixated as much on the comparative physiology of men and women, menstruation cycles, and the 5-year-old daughter she has left behind, as they did on her accomplishments. (No one asked about the children of her two male colleagues.) Shortly before the launch, Pang Zhihao, an official with the China National Space Administration, let it be known that a cargo capsule had supplied the orbiting space station with sanitary napkins and cosmetics. “Female astronauts may be in better condition after putting on makeup,” he said in remarks shown on CCTV, the state television network. Photo: Col. Wang Yaping, center, with Col. Ye Guangfu, left, and Maj. Gen. Zhai Zhigang at a pre-launch ceremony on Oct. 15 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. Credit: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images —The New York Times, October 23, 2021

If one puts lipstick on an astronaut,

can she still blaze through arid

atmospheres, dangle wildly from a line 

that tethers her to the mothership 

even as she kicks up her heels 

and pirouettes out into star space?

 

It seems makeup is a juggernaut 

that enhances our reality. Some added

emphasis, a glowing image to re-define

a star-struck traveler, to make her trip

seem normal, like any mom who feels

a need to exit might arguably face.

 

There is nothing to be feared. We ought

to be glad some girl wearing a padded

suit has figured out she can still shine, 

even if she must give her family the slip.

Perhaps pancake isn’t so perfidious, but conceals

a dream or two that she might still embrace.

Mary K O'Melveny is a recently retired labor rights attorney who lives in Washington DC and Woodstock NY.  Her work has appeared in various print and on-line journals. Her first poetry chapbook A Woman of a Certain Age is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary’s poetry collection Merging Star Hypotheses was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2020. Her latest poetry collection Dispatches From The Memory Care Museum has just been published by Kelsay Books.