I’ve never been so glad to see Kansas

as the day I’m driving through

Humboldt, Nebraska.

 

This is the place where they killed

Teena Brandon, because she looked

too much like a boy.

Wanted to be one, too.

 

She was Brandon, in the end, not Teena.

No one could rape it out of her, out of him,

although at least two men tried.

The sheriff laughed and let them go.

 

They came back and finished the job,

shot her at close range, then stabbed him,

to finish the job. Like they thought they were

killing two people, a two-gendered freak.

 

In the movie, “Boys Don’t Cry,”  they didn’t tell

how s/he always wanted hair

the color Willa Cather called

certain wheat fields in the sun.

 

Was it because blondes have more fun?

Or was the bleach a disguise, hoping he could

hide, from Lincoln to Falls City to Humboldt?

The house where he died sits off in the distance, mute.