I sold my dick
to Kris Kovick
for $2.95, she gave me a ten
and told me to keep the change.

"I'm sick of this prick," I said,
"maybe you can use it for something, like, I dunno
draw a cartoon with it
use it when your paintbrushes run out
or stick it on your lapel and wear it like a rose.
Pretty girls will walk up to you and breathe it in."

Yeah, that's right:
I am renouncing being a boy.
The process started when I was 15,
I was about to ask out my best girl friend,
only the day before, my best guy friend tried to rape her
Things didn't work out so well
I was put under a spell
"Figure out your own fuckin' sexuality,"
my fairy godmother said to me,
and disappeared

Everyone was disappearing in those days
even my sex drive, vanished, like the way you stop being hungry
when someone vomits on the table
I guess you could say I got bored before I started
I started
talking and acting and thinking like a girl,
my parents thought it was cause I was gay
when really it was that I only talked to girls anymore,
picking up patterns of speech
like other boys picked up the hints they dropped
and the coats they dropped
on purpose,

The way girls learn to make boys work for them,
I learned to make girls hide me away,
I was the ultimate stuffed animal
buried deep in their beds
but afraid to try
anything.

There's a paradox inherent in that, I know
but I don't have time for contradictions,
I'm on a mission:
Give away my dick,
and quick.

Kris Kovick made me an honorary boy,
and I bragged about it for weeks:
To the punk rock kids back home
and the dyke rock kids here
and even my Orthodox friends who thought he played for the Dodgers

And I said, yeah, we're all kind of dodgers here
the last girl I hooked up with,
I told her I was transitioning, MtM
and she said it was a lie

I'm transitioning beyond M,
finding N and O and P
Do I kiss like a girl?
I kiss like a whole sorority,
drunk off my ass
and looking for a new outfit
to climb out of.




Kris Kovick was the father figure of the SF poetry scene, always cooking for everyone and making sure we were all stayin' out too late and up to no good. she drew a lot of killer cartoons and co-wrote songs with the band Tribe 8. she was really funny. she died of cancer in autumn 2000 and a lot of people are really missing her right now.

More info on Matthue Roth: Click here.