Gladys Bentley Leaves Gladys Bentley on Read

112 Feminist Studies 47, no. 1. © 2021 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Gladys Bentley Leaves Gladys Bentley on Read Jalynn Harris Author’s note: Gladys “Bobbie” Bentley was the top hat talent of the Harlem Renaissance’s “Jungle Alley.” Jungle Alley was the party-poppin’ block where Bentley notoriously brought down the queer speakeasy Clam House with covers of popularsongs .In1952,duringtheMcCarthyera,Bentley published an article in Ebony Magazine called “I Am a Woman Again,” in which he details his maternally neglectful childhood, denounces his trans-mansculine identity, and announces that a combination of hormone therapy and marriage has made him “a woman again.” This poem imagines Bentley using he/him pronouns as an act of reclaiming and reaffirming Bentley’s gender queerness and masculinity. Yesterday 23:59 I get it. Our life is a grand piano played to get the job, but why in the hell are you burning my cummerbund? call me back.   Read 23:59 Yesterday 01:10 I can’t sleep. I saw the headlines tangled in your wedding dress, those silk hydrangeas dead in your veil. Tell me, has he smelt you fry domestic? Does he ask you to tie his tie? Doesn’t he know you are a top hat talent fat with buffet flats?   Read 01:10 Jalynn Harris 113 Today 13:55 (1/2) I get tight at the stuck *title. I was never a woman so how can you return us to one? marriage is nothing but another form of tucking. Did Ebony take you (2/2) *your pen? Make you swallow The Miracle, a lavender marriage dead like those hydrangeas. Read 13:55 Today 16:56 (1/2) Blame fame, Glad, or our mother, or someone else who never loved us. Let her kiss you, if you like. Then wake up drinking jungle again. Grow your fingernails a cane, walk your feet into ’gators, gather the garden’s gravel. (2/2) Swallow. Then sing until he comes in fresh brogans to explain the word “dance.” Read 16:56 ...