Posted by The Yale Review, Written by Zackary Pace, Nov 15, 2021 

Re constructed and edited by Ezra Kaminsky 

You can hear it, as soon as I start to speak, 

effeminate inflection, nasal vowels, a slight lisp—qulalities of tone that may sound dissonant from my gender presentation: 

a queer voice.

Acoustically higher, a guitar tuned to only the truth

Out of these minuscule bodily variations, we have created a polarized binary

My body produces homosexuality

Defined- “whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant.

Deviating from the presiding rhythms of sexual and social norms 

It’s not that I use different words from everyone else but that the frequency at which I say them raises an ear. 

I often consider how these things impact the way I build relationships. Have I missed out on a best friend? Or let down my writing by performing in a way unfaithful to masculinity? 

I now realize the gift I’ve been given. Evading the wrong group instantly, and connecting with others over an unspoken understanding. 

I wish away the negative realities and center my voice in the reconstruction of the “abnormalities”

Envision a movement of voices with the individual goal of reordering the relations among sexual behaviors, 

erotic identities, 

constructions of gender,

regimes of enunciation, 

logics of representation,

modes of self-constitution, 

and practices of community—for restructuring, that is, the relations among power, truth, and desire