Ode To The Drag Queen Laureate - Gail Onion

[Larry Robinson]

Ode To The Drag Queen Laureate
					
				dedicated to the first Drag Laureate of San Francisco
						D’Arcy Drollinger
					

Come out now. Come out from your banishment, your isolation,
you are queen after all, and what you bring to us 
is the magic of transformation, the boldness of Dorothy
and Alice, the outrageous and clever play, but deeper tenderness
of being who you are, not just a pretty face in glad rags
of sartorial splendor, but of not holding back from delight,
for the joy of dance and song and the wonder of not just 
Queen for a Day but for Life, no longer hiding behind curtains, 
but unfolding on Life’s stage, a dawn of perpetual indulgence. 
Queens, come out in raiment no longer in disguises, 
what is in the closet is out of the closet worn in defiant tribute, 
for those many Royals lost through centuries of abuse, imprisonment,
threatened and murdered. The Drag Queen Laureate sits on her 
throne in the library with an open book of fairy tales in her lap.
Around her children of all ages gather, eagerly listening,
as she spins the old stories of which she is inextricably woven
and enchantedly made, fashioned from glitter, fabulous gowns to the ground,
with perfect stiletto pumps and not a hair out of place hair, all stigma
removed like Nair, a Queen who really cares and turns the page to
happily ever after, smiles a demure smile and whispers for all to hear,
May it be so.

	- Gail Onion