Queerfella
on the family farm in malew they feared
to speak its common name a manx sailor
rattus rattus superstition that made haste
onto shrouded land where, as a kid,
he earned a penny-a-tail hanging
like that boy on a prairie fence.
life & death and four thousand miles
that separates us feels too deep in roots
our open faces hidden by blood & blood
striped by tears burning burnt cheeks.
longtails, joeys, their throwaway names,
the queerfella spits itself out.
no wonder we escape bodies that sink
or encage ourselves in sewered shame.
Simon Maddrell is a queer Manx man, thriving with HIV and living in Brighton & Hove. He’s published in fourteen anthologies and numerous publications including AMBIT, Butcher’s Dog, Stand, The Moth, The New European, Morning Star, Perverse, Dawntreader and Long Poem Magazine.
Simon’s debut, Throatbone, was published by UnCollected Press in July 2020.
Queerfella jointly-won The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition, 2020.
He is one of three poets in the Nine Pens Press anthology, All About Our Mothers (Jan. 2022).
This poem was previously published in The Coil Magazine, June 10th 2020 and in the pamphlet Queerfella published by The Rialto in December 2020.
