The Confessions of Wendy Boy
to become the fable
by inverting it into a rhododendron
to split the rhododendron’s difference
into a quibble and a parterre
to make a parterre the site
of a lesbian affair
a plié lesbian parterre
when I was a Wendy boy
a friend to philodendrons and pansies
I wasn’t “I”
I was a plié
or was I the papillon
haranguing the philodendrons
stacked against the wall
I am the wall
heretofore known as Wendy Boy
a plié boy without
a necessary tincture of taciturnity
Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, novelist, artist, filmmaker, performer—has published 24 books, including Stubble Archipelago, Ultramarine, The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, My 1980s & Other Essays, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Circus, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen’s Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). His newest book, a novel, My Lover, the Rabbi, was published by FSG in March 2026. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a Whiting Award. He is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
