after this we changed the channel to baseball

did you hear about that muslim guy who killed all those faggots?
my little cousin doesn’t know
my little cousin doesn’t know
at age 11/his voice chirping
like the whine after the BANG
and the blinking shock//I wonder if
he would call me that/if he learned
that I had died//he doesn’t know
how could he know when his father
spitting/tobacco calls the mover
a shine/when he calls his best
friend gay – a joke – his mother
laughs//when my sister, warning,
paints a nail red/don’t start, he’s
too young to understand.

By Haley Clapp

Biography:

Haley Clapp is a recent Indiana University Bloomington graduate and fledgling queer poet who will be attending King’s College London in the fall for her MA in Critical Methodologies. She has served on the Editorial Board of various IU publications, including LABYRINTH and The Undergraduate Scholar. She loves sad songs and horror movies and hopes to end up somewhere in the world between literature/art and academia.