Kandace Siobhan Walker

Third Gender Sonnet

Everyone is female and everyone hates it.
– Andrea Long Chu

Pop girls on the radio are singing about gender.
At the awards shows they are dancing gender.
On the silver screens they are playing gender.
In the high street shops they are buying gender,
drinking gender in the bars, kissing gender in the clubs,
reading gender on the bus to work, drawing gender on
the breath-frosted window with gender’s own finger,
leaving the newspaper’s front-page gender on the seat.
Landing on ‘third gender’ on the form with three tickboxes,
no write-in gender, then scribbling out this answer,
crossing out this umbrella gender entirely, picking a tophat
gender
of the remaining two, incorrect genders, though not equally,
because this is where a third option leads us, gender escapees
at a canyon
where our gender runs out of road.