Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
What a Waste
by Jill McDonough
I tell Josey I’m going to write and publish
a poem about your breasts called “What
a Waste” and she says Don’t forget my ankles.
It’s true; her ankles are sculpted, sharp
and sleek and hollowed just where they should
be, cry out for high heels. They’re something
out of film noir, I tell her. No, she says, they’re
a fucking Bernini. What every woman wants; ankles
and breasts like Josey’s, Josey’s perfect body
wasted in Carhartts, men’s underwear, Pendleton
shirts. I want to gnaw on her left ankle
like a chicken leg, anybody would, and don’t
get me started on her breasts. But Josey’s
delicious, compact body isn’t for us, gang:
Josey gets to do whatever she wants with hers.
What a waste, I tell her, while we laugh
at whoever would say such a thing about
someone else, another person, or her perfect
body, Josey using it to live her perfect life.
Copyright © 2018 by Jill McDonough. Used with the permission of the author. Previously published in Green Mountains Review’s (Spring 2018.)
About the Author
Jill McDonough’s books of poems include Here All Night (Alice James, 2019), Reaper (Alice James, 2017), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), and Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008). The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, NEA, NYPL, FAWC, and Stanford, her work appears in The Threepenny Review and Best American Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at UMass-Boston and offers College Reading and Writing in Boston jails. Jill McDonough’s American Treasure comes out in 2022 with Alice James Books. Her website is jillmcdonough.com.
2021 Queer Poem a Day
- Day 1: Pride Month by Shelley Wong
- Day 2: Is This or Is This True as Happiness by Derrick Austin
- Day 3: Nature Poem by Sam Herschel Wein
- Day 4: Ana I Don’t Forget by Gala Mukomolova
- Day 5: Eavesdropping on Adam and Eve by Andrea Cohen
- Day 6: Billow of Thistles by Ruben Quesada
- Day 7: Prayer for My Trans Siblings by H. Melt
- Day 8: Summer by Chen Chen
- Day 9: Embers by Henri Cole
- Day 10: Male Beauty by Richie Hofmann
- Day 11: [unsent draft] by Rachel Mennies
- Day 12: Forty by Julia Guez
- Day 13: Of Contour, of Cadence by Phillip B. Williams
- Day 14: The Men We Loved by Cyril Wong
- Day 15: Riding the Bus Back to Oxford by Catherine Pond
- Day 16: The Window by Jay Besemer
- Day 17: Want Could Kill Me by Xandria Phillips
- Day 18: What a Waste by Jill McDonough
- Day 19: Eros by Randall Mann
- Day 20: An Act by Michael M. Weinstein
- Day 21: Things I Didn’t Do With this Body and Things I Did by Amanda Gunn
- Day 22: Puzzle Pieces by D. A. Powell
- Day 23: Duplicity by Jameson Fitzpatrick
- Day 24: Is It True All Legends Once Were Rumors by Carl Phillips
- Day 25: High School Sleepovers with Straight Girls by Julian Guy
- Day 26: Abu Nuwas by Kazim Ali
- Day 27: Observation Car by Lauren Clark
- Day 28: Love Song by Eileen Myles
- Day 29: Donuts by Dan Kraines
- Day 30: The Lone Palm by Jenny Johnson
Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this second year of our series is the first movement, Schéhérazade, from Masques, Op. 34, by Karol Szymanowski, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
