“Boy in a Whalebone Corset” by Saeed Jones is about a gay man who likes to dress femininely and this is found out by his seemingly conservative and non accepting father who reacts very harshly and negatively. “Im against the wall, bruised/but out of mine: dream-headed/with my corset still on, stays/slightly less tight, bones against/bones, broken glass on the floor,/dance steps for a waltz/with no partner”(12). The speaker is hurt, whether physically or emotionally and mentally after his father finds his feminine clothing. As I know from other Saeed Jones poems and his New York Times essay, Jones would use poetry to distract himself from his reality– to pretend he’s not experiencing these feelings but rather a character he’s written about. “Bruised but out of mine” is the speaker’s way of disassociating, from pretending he’s anywhere but in his room watching his father burn his clothes. I imagine “dance steps with a waltz/with no partner” to mean his journey of self-discovery he’s had to take alone. “Father in my room/ looking for more sissy clothes/to burn. Something pink in his fist,/negligee, lace, fishnet, whore./His son’s a whore this last night/of Sodom”(page 12). His father is searching his room to look for more feminine clothing which later in the poem I learn he burns with a gasoline jug and matches in their yard. The italicized “sissy clothes” could mean the father called them that. While the actions in the poem are quite literal, how it makes the author feel is represented in metaphors. Other Saeed Jones poems like The Blue Dress and Boy in a Stolen Evening Gown relate to this poem with the part clothes can play.