Ask The Author: D Gilson

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D Gilson’s “Call & Response” was a part of our June Issue. D Gilson responds to our calls below in regards to life blood, truck stops, and trust.

1. Why does no one ever ask when did someone know they were straight?

Heteronormativity. It’s like our law system, everyone is guilty of being straight unless proven otherwise. I’m thinking of Raymond’s barber shop, where my dad and I would go every other Saturday when I was a wee lad. The regulars there, older men with their Missouri Farm Association coffee mugs at hand and Marlboro cigarettes at lips, loved to ask me, “you gotta girlfriend yet?” Did I know I wanted a boyfriend then? No. But if I would have, and they had asked who my boyfriend was, I probably would have said Patrick Swayze or LeVar Burton from Reading Rainbow. Alas…

But there is a key point here. Heteronormativity is dangerous because it reinforces, within children from a very young age, the notion that being straight is good and being otherwise is bad. Hopefully this ideal will continue to change, but it’s a huge paradigm shift that’s going to take time and effort from every single one of us.

2. Should we ever trust men?

Hell yes. Especially men in glasses. See also: Ryan Gosling.

3. Why did you chose couplets for “Call & Response”?

Couplets are good formally for exploring intimacies between two people. In “Call & Response” those two people shift from beginning to end, but I hope it still works. At the time of writing it, I had been re-reading D.A. Powell’s Cocktails, so that surely had an influence, too.

4. How much of your life bleeds into your poetry?

84.7% of it. With many liberties, of course.

5. In an arm wrestling match between Lucifer and God, who would you side with? What would you wager?

God. Partially because I’m a virgo blessed with eternal optimism. Partially because I’m still too scared of saying otherwise. And partially because God is played by Ryan Gosling in my head. Or sometimes Anderson Cooper. Either one works. And I’ll wager my eternal services as a live-in houseboy-poet. God I hope God wins.

6. What is the best food one can buy at a truck stop?

Doritos and Diet Coke. I am my mother’s child.