ABOUT THIS BOOK

In her Los Angeles Review of Books essay “Who Is Who: Pronouns, Gender, and Merging Selves,” Dana Levin describes Stacey Waite’s fusion of gender identities: “Pseudonyms, heteronyms, personae, all the ventriloquizing literary arts; point of view and tonal shifts: these are tools for speakers and speaking. But the sentence too has a voice: ‘i will not be the kind of boy who can not bear the memory of her body’ … This is [Waite’s] genius … to take innocuous syntactical phrasing and change the players mid-sentence — to get around English’s pronominal either/or by creating a syntactical both/and…”

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Stacey Waite is the author of three collections of poems: Choke (winner of the 2004 Frank O’Hara Prize), Love Poem to Androgyny (Main Street Rag, 2007), and the lake has no saint (winner of Tupelo’s 2008 Snowbound Chapbook Award). With both an M.F.A. in poetry and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Pittsburgh, Waite now teaches courses in writing, gender studies, and pedagogy as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln.

REVIEWS

“Although gender is never simple in Waite’s book, this inclination to let it speak, in all of its various incarnations, gives the book a great strength and relevance. Clear language makes the poems accessible (a word I use in the most positive sense), and a fluid motion between past and present, between masculine and feminine, makes them complex. All told, Waite has put together a valuable, fascinating, and beautiful first book.”— Emily May Anderson, NewPages

“The people populating these poems are intensely human. Through a voice that is at once humorous, poignant, and tragic, we are offered an enriched way to see each other.”— Caitlin Mackenzie, The The Poetry Blog

“While the subject matter in Butch Geography isn’t run-of-the-mill, Waite — a former student and instructor at Pitt who now teaches at the University of Nebraska — uses a steady and contemplative voice, even when the speaker doesn’t have all the answers to the questions being asked. And it’s Waite’s use of speaker as changeling, searching for identity, that makes this work so compelling.”— Fred Shaw, Pittsburgh City Paper

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

I
On the Occasion of Being Mistaken for a Boy by the Umpire… - 3
Self-Portrait, 1984 - 4
Letter to Brian Nelson, Who Chanted Boy or a Girl, Boy or a Girl… - 5
In Second Grade Robby O'Reilly Punches Me in the Eye.... - 6
Boys in Trees - 7
The Monkevs - 8
Self-Portrait, 1986 -9
Elegy -10
Kimberlv - 11
It Has Always Been Frankie Cossinelli - 12
Tits - 14
On the Occasion of Being Mistaken for the Delivery Boy… - 16
About Ben - 18
Gesture Toward Seeing It Coming - 20
Remembering a Full Moon, Threaded 21
Dear Gender - 22

II
Butch Geography - 25
When the Dead Ask for Maps - 27
Wedding Photo, 1968 - 28
Dear Gender - 29
Poem for My First Girlfriend - 30
Poem for My First Girlfriend - 31
Prince, the Androgynous - 32
If I Were a Man, She'd Be in Love with Me - 33
On the Occasion of Being Mistaken for a Man by the Cashier… - 34
Coming Out in Porch Light - 35
On the Occasion of Being Mistaken for a Man by a Waiter… - 37
On the Occasion of Being Mistaken for a Man by Security Personnel … - 39
What It Means to Inherit - 41
What the Fire Teaches - 42
Dear Gender - 43
Choke - 44

III
In the Womb - 47
Dear Gender - 48
To a Woman Who Has Never Been My Lover - 49
XY - 50
Love Poem to Androgyny - 51
Fixing My Voice - 52
To a Woman Who Has Never Been My Lover - 53
At a Rest Stop in Central Pennsylvania, a Man Chokes Me… - 54
Reading Stone Butch Blues - 55
Talk Show - 56
Penis Envy - 57
From Laramie - 58
For Tomboys - 59
A Poem in Response to Those Who Argue That… - 60
On the Occasion of Being Mistaken for a Man by a Pregnant Woman… - 61
Dear Gender - 62

IV
Butch Defines Feminism under the Following Conditions - 65
Changing the Names - 67
The Clownfish - 68
The Kind of Man I Am at the DMV - 70
Explication: Intersexual - 72
Biographies of Hands - 73
Sandhill Crane Information Session - 74
Conversation with My Student, James -75
Letter from Thomas Beattie to the Media - 76
Dear Gender - 78
Elegy - 79
Gendered Offerings - 80
On the Occasion of Being Mistaken for a Woman by a Therapist… - 81
My Mother's Hands - 82
As a Woman Sometimes Does to a Man - 83
Unlearning the Body with My Grandfather - 84

Acknowledgments - 87