#431 Backstory of the Poem “My Husband Tells Me He Is Gay” by Kimberly Ann Priest from her poetry collection TETHER & LUNG published by Texas A & M University Press on February 22, 2025
Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form?
If I remember correctly, this poem was inspired by a sculpture I saw somewhere. I don’t recall if it was online or in a museum. Given my financial situation at the time, it was probably online. Anyway, I recall viewing this twisted shiny silver metal sculpture somewhere and thinking about modern abstract art, how it’s incredibly appealing to some people and not at all to others. How some people will build a relationship with the abstraction and others will move on from the piece quickly to view something of greater interest.
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The meditation became a metaphor for my husband’s experience as a gay man. He was the sculpture—the artwork at the center of a room dismissible to most, desirable to some. I imagined myself as the lone person in that museum room mesmerized by the art piece and realized that my gaze was, to him, dismissible. Yet, there I am looking, longing, craving.
This imagination merged with recollections of the many times I watched him fix things such as our kitchen sink, all bent and twisted inside the cupboard cavity to reach the pipes. And then there are the pipes, their own anatomy like that of the sculpture. So, the pipes, man, and sculpture all become this sort of emergent energy, as if they are working hard to be something less abstract and twisted. As if they are trying to become ‘straight’ or seem ‘straight’, a direct metaphor for my gay husband trying to appear to be a straight man by being married to me.
BELOW: Sculptures made from pipes by Yi Chul Hee
Meanwhile I, the speaker, am the “lone curious stranger” in all these scenarios with feral longing for something that, like a museum piece, is not meant for my touch. Writing this poem began with these imaginations and insights. It began with alienation and lust and the words rolled rather beautifully from my typing fingers onto the Word document in front of me.
And, as with many of my poems, the title came last. The poem itself doesn’t mention my husband’s sexuality, so I knew I need the title to do that work. It took some time to realize a title, but when I did, it became a comment on the unsaid in the poem. My husband never did tell me he was gay, not once before or after our divorce. But I knew. There existed between us this secret he carried as if it were all the oxygen in a space, the atmosphere in my imagined museum room where I and the sculpture are mutually estranged though within each other’s view.
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail.
I was in my kitchen. Not the kitchen I have now. This was the kitchen in the house where he and I lived at the time of divorce. I loved that little house and stayed in it a few years after divorce. Often, I would write poetry on my computer while standing at the kitchen counter. The countertops were grey-brown and the cupboards where honey-colored wood. It was all very 1950s or 60s in style. Knobs and handles were silver, and all the appliances were stainless steel. The floor was laminate that mimicked hard wood and I had some fun magnets on the refrigerator featuring Lucille Ball from “I Love Lucy.” I still have those and still love Lucy.
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Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us?
I don’t think so! This is one of those poems that lived so long in my imagination that it was all there and ready to be documented when I finally wrote it down. I may have cut a word or two, but I don’t recall editing this poem much. Sometimes I just have poems that come out perfectly right on the first try.
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What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem?
Well, unrequited love or desire is a rather universal experience. Probably all of us have, at one time or another, wanted to be with someone but couldn’t be or wasn’t wanted back. It’s an awful awful feeling to be the person longing, especially if you are entrapped with the other person as I was because we were married. This too is a common experience; many spouses feel alone in their desire for their partner, but the feeling is not reciprocated. Yet, a slew of responsibilities like children or debt may keep you tethered together.
If my reader takes only one thing away from this, I would want it to be that desire is nothing to be ashamed of even when it is not returned. Being the partner with longing can leave someone feeling that their longing is embarrassing or foolish. I know I felt that way. Before I understood my husband’s sexuality, I felt shame because our desire wasn’t equal. Of course, I thought something was wrong with me, that I was not desirable. Again, lots of us have felt that way.
Shame will eat you up if you let it. When I wrote this poem, I came to terms with the fact that he felt lonely in our relationship, that he couldn’t conjure the desire I had. But it took me a lot longer to stop thinking I was part of the problem, that something about me influenced his lack of interest. As he has said since, this was never the case. But it takes time to let that sink in. Now, when I read this poem, I feel warm. I feel love. I feel the strength of that desire and it makes me proud that I loved someone this much even though he could not love me back in equal measure. I still see “the fjord that dips between rib bones and thighs” and recall those delicate, delicious first passions.
BELOW: Kimberly Ann Priest in 2015 and 2018 the time frame that she wrote the poem “My Husband Tells Me He Is Gay.”
Which part of the poem was the most emotional of you to write and why?
The title. It was the first time I put on paper that my husband was gay, and I remember crying. So many years of longing for something that would never become more than what it was. Seeing it printed like that broke my heart.
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Yes, it has! It was published in NELLE in 2022, and it will appear again in my new book, tether & lung, debuting from Texas Review Press in February 15 2025. You can pre-order a copy of the book. Get one! I promise you won’t regret it!!
