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Gina Bernard

First Time

 
                                                                                                                     I.
          She attends my juggling audition for a madrigals dinner show, and later flirts by tossing bean bags about the stage, demanding I play fetch.
          On opening night, I bring her catered supper behind a pleated jabot. I unfoil her Yukon Gold and spoon potato onto her tongue. She wrinkles her nose at the suggestion she might eat the skin.
          In December, at the Minneapolis wrap party, she slides into the hotel whirlpool. Her foot, sleek as sealskin, seeks my chin. Gaze austere—eyebrows summarily arched—she climbs her pink toes past my lips and into my mouth.
          At 11:00, management shuts the jets off. I go to my room, dress, and meet her in the lobby. She conducts me out to her Honda. It seems entirely reasonable when she drops me off in a Denny’s parking lot, dry snow skittering about, with directions to order dessert. She herself needs to meet some friends she hasn’t seen since high school.
          She returns at two in the morning, long after I’ve finished my pie. Sweeping into the booth, she pokes a fork at her weepy meringue. I sulk. She reaches across the table and digs the tines into my forearm. They don’t break skin, but I hitch like an unprimed engine.
          “Apologize. And tell me you didn’t mind waiting. Can you do that for me?” I nod, and she presses the fork deeper. “No, no, sweetie. Use your words.”
          Sent to the car while she settles with the hostess, I find her Accord locked. Overhead, a flag snaps sharply in the wind, grommets rattling against the hollow pole.

                                                                                                                     II.
          In the few minutes preceding my baptism, she at last deigns a scansion of her form; permits me to mind each metered rise and fall of her breasts; indulges my servile compulsion to reproduce her prosody:
                      Her hair pours over her shoulders, India ink spilled from a well;
                      her cursive touch beguiles with the precision of arcane script;
                      chips of brilliant diamond glisten from the shallow of her philtrum;
                      and in the prominence of each vertebrae, I trail a surfacing dolphin.
          There too is the physics of our coupling, pelvic geometry, my own unversed rhythm—a delicious quickening. And in the time it takes to insert a space between stanzas, she’s rolled off the bed. Shivering, I watch her dress in the faint light framing the door.
          She leaves with no further instructions.

                                                                                                                     III.
          She is 18, a first-year music major. I am undeclared, a nineteen-year-old stranger secreting herself in closets. When we get back to Bemidji, a mutual acquaintance points out the apartment she shares with three girlfriends. It perches above a threadbare motor lodge, at the top of a yawning stairwell hammered to the side of the building. I prepare to summit, hesitate. It isn’t that she has so readily dismissed my proffered virginity. My intentions are covetous: I want to breathe her poise—steal the very self-possession which empowered her to puppet me. She is a glyph of who I might be. And I hunger to slip inside again. But next time I will delve deep beneath the mystery of her skin and know the thew of her iron conviction; feel the printed page as I slide my finger along its rough edge; savor the musky density of mango on my tongue; draw a razor across the gentle concavity of my shins; and brush my hair, luminous in the earthy warmth of a flowering garden.

                                                                                                                     IV.
          Of course I never speak to her again. And it isn’t until much, much later that I learn to nurture more pragmatic visions of womanhood.
​
                                                                                                                     V.
          But in these selfsame wee hours, I ache for the admonishing pinch of her fork: it christened an awakening more enduring than my sorrow in forgetting her name.





--
Gina Marie Bernard is a heavily tattooed transgender woman, roller derby vixen, and full-time English teacher. She has completed a 50-mile ultra marathon, followed Joan Jett across the US, taught creative writing at a medium-security prison, and purposely jumped through a hole cut in lake ice. She lives in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her daughters, Maddie and Parker, own her heart. Her poetry collection Naked, Gettin’ Nuder is a 2018-2019 Glass Chapbook Series finalist.

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  • Home
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022