Too Gay

Too Gay
__________________

—for 15-year-old Lawrence King,
an eighth grader at E.O. Green
Junior High School in Oxnard
___________________

“You are too new”
—Sylvia Plath
“New Year on Dartmoor”
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This is gayness—
Every little tawdry tidbit
Closeted and gift-wrapped
And so very peculiar

Mincing and lisping—
In a pretty little falsetto
So irresistibly precocious
Only you don't know yet
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You pretend it’s—
Make-believe but then
Suddenly things get a
Little too inaccessible

The handsome one—
Gets pissed off by the
Way you look at him
The way you’re so cruisy
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Maybe your mascara—
Or perhaps your eye-shadow
Blinded you to the zeitgeist
You were just too gay

That morning in English—
Typing up your homework
You didn’t hear him behind
You as he pulled the trigger