I Don’t Know What I Look Like; I Can’t Ever Know What I Look Like To You. by Nate Pritts

Nate Pritts is the author of two books of poetry - Sensational Spectacular (2007) and Honorary Astronaut (2008) - with a third, The Wonderfull Yeare, due in early 2010. The founder & editor of H_NGM_N, Nate teaches poetry at the Downtown Writers Center/YMCA in Syracuse, NY. Find him online at http://www.natepritts.com.


I’m driving to work, the deep middle center of September, & it’s upstate New York outside; it’s cold already & the leaves are starting to change colors. I’m noticing every single leaf, working hard to navigate the quasi-rush hour traffic & not crash, to sing along loudly to the music I’ve selected for the drive without missing a note: dazzling red, stunning orange, brilliant green, lovely lovely yellow & the hundreds of shades of each that go unrecognized & the hundreds of shades of each you could pick out & give names to if you slowed down.

This is what a (pro)feminist [Man Poet] looks like at 9:00 am on a Tuesday: I have blue eyes that are responsive to shifts in weather (today they’re dull); hair that I never thought of as blonde is, sort of, blonde & flies out a little by my ears; my beard has some grey hairs just at the chin, finally giving me a credential toward maturity as I hit 35 in a few weeks; I wear glasses, thick frames that I imagine make me look earnest; I’m 6’ tall in shoes. I don’t often think about my body. I guess I know it’s there. My brain sends signals to make my fingers move. But when I’m walking around, or driving to work, I’m nothing but my brain thinking & my heart feeling. I am, mostly, disconnected from any sense of my own physicality. I wonder if that makes me lucky.

Heather says she has an impulse to balance mind & body. Heather says, “Your hair is definitely blonde.” Heather says she’d rather live on an isolated mountain than on a lost island. Heather says feminism(s) is all about “ensuring equal chances for happiness.” Heather stretches & grabs my arm & my arm is real, suddenly. It’s there where it wasn’t before.

I’m looking into the eyes of each of my students, trying to get them to care about the essay we’re reading. We’re reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s “An Apology for Idlers.” I don’t particularly care if they understand all of it but I really want them to be fired up about it. I want them to be mad at me for making them read it, or grateful. I want my actions to have at least one of the desired consequences & I don’t often think about the fact that I am a man asking this. I wonder if this matters or how I could control the myriad responses this may elicit from the students & I wonder if the fact that I elect to think about this – rather than being forced to confront it daily – makes me lucky.

I tell my students that I’ve never been very good with names but I remember faces. I tell them to say hi if they see me walking around campus. I tell them that I’m friendly even if I look distracted. I tell them I’m going to call each of them simply “Sir” or “Ma’am” depending on their gender. I don’t say that I’m terrified I’ll look directly at someone & call them the wrong name.

I’m navigating three lanes of traffic, powerfully switching lanes with my knees as I reach for my coffee & sing along to the song I’m playing too loudly. “If I could draw a map / of a boy that I would like, / your resume would shine through / like a bright green light.” I can’t explain much of anything to anyone. I’m constantly confronted by the fact that I’m woefully inarticulate – that there is some special kind of bursting inside my me that I can’t translate into human language. Only once do I think I’m singing a song sung by a girl, written by a girl, about how hard it is to be a girl. There are two voices here – Anna & Nate. I can’t be “Ms. Wrong” the way she is.

H_NGM_N, the online journal I founded & still edit, is interested in “linguistic sparks, the slow burn, the zany & the serene […] committed to lively & engaging writing.” What this means, to me, is that the magazine publishes the poetry submitted to it that best fits that pretty general description. I want to support poetry that is saying something vital & amazing. Does it matter who is doing the saying?

Yes, it does. “I am trying to say / What I want to say / Without having to say / ‘I love you.’” This time there are three voices: Torquil, Amy & Nate. I know that the words mean something different, or they mean the same thing in different ways, depending on who is doing the saying. What I’m trying to say is that I am energized by a plurality of voices, by a multitude of saying. What I’m trying to say is I love you & since I love you I have a responsibility to you. What I’m trying to say is that I want you to have an equal chance at happiness.

Heather standing outside looking for rainbows; Heather sitting next to me at the coffee shop; Heather writing about different Heathers while sitting at the kitchen table; Heather gasping, along with me, pointing out early bursts of autumn color; Heather saying “heart” & suddenly it’s something real, & heavy, & red. Suddenly, there’s something beating inside my chest.

This is what a (pro)feminist [Man Poet] thinks about at 12:49 pm on a Wednesday: fall leaves & rainbows & his own body, finally, & his own heart & head, always, & the bodies of other people & their heads & hearts. I think I don’t know what I look like. I think I can’t ever know what I look like to you. I think your mind is racing like a pronoun, from you to you & back again, from he to she to I.

I think I’d like to be better at being me.