Magpies & Asexuality: Two Tiny Offerings

I’m knee deep in schoolwork without much time to write, but I thought I’d share two little nuggets that sprung up this week: a high contrast magpie, and a meta-sonnet on the Asexual and Aromantic spectrums (the latter in theme but not explicity content). The poem I haven’t even brought to class yet, so we’ll call it an early draft. But it’s one of those things that seemed might be of service to folks like me who didn’t have the gift of certain language in their lives, until stumbling upon it on the internet a few (or four) decades into life.

Something I love about magpies is they are social birds, and must have community to survive, but are often found alone. I feel a great affinity with them, in some ways in the photo-negative of that structure: I must be alone for large amounts of time in order to survive, but am often found socializing. Being in a school program has put that in the clarity of high contrast (like my drawing), as I navigate the social aspects of being in school again, and finding enough solitude to recharge adequately. As the blacks and whites of my drawing define one another to create a cohesive whole, so, too, does this balance function in my life.

And now for something completely different, a sonnet:

How does it shift the power of a form,

Whose hist’ry claims a normative narration,

When writer in identity won’t conform,

Can’t tolerate expected obligation?

Of love and sex and ardor it’s expected

A sonnet’s themes to honor and uphold;

Romance pursued, requited and rejected

Ensures the matches always fit the mold.

We use our poetry to underline

That coupling is the answer, to revere it

But I would rather choose to undermine

To offer an alternative – to Queer it.

Past structure lies a vast reality:

The Spectrum of Asexuality.