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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 #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
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      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
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  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025