Close Out National Poetry Month by Preordering Queer Poetry Books
I’m asked all the time how people can support queer and trans authors, especially in this potent moment of increased targeted book banning, and two of the easiest things you can do is: request upcoming LGBTQ books from your public library and, if you have the money, preorder them. Preordering books is immensely helpful for writers! So, to close out this year’s National Poetry Month, I thought it would be fun to look to the future of queer poetry. Here are some upcoming queer poetry books you can preorder right now! Also, if you want to stay on top of your preorders for poetry collections and chapbooks put out by queer poets of color, keep Shade Literary Arts’ continuously updated preview list bookmarked!
Spellbook for the Sabbath Queen by Elisheva Fox (May 2023)
Billed as “part psalter, part Sapphic verse,” this upcoming book out from Belle Point Press weaves in Jewish mysticism and vivid place writing on the Gulf Coast and East Texas.
Mare’s Nest by Holly Mitchell (May 2023)
This one’s for the horse gays! It’s about Kentucky, queer adolescence in the early aughts, and yes HORSES!
I Am the Most Dangerous Thing by Candace Williams (May 2023)
This is the author’s debut full-length poetry book. According to the publisher: “Over the course of these poems, the Black, queer protagonist begins to erase violent structures and fill the white spaces with her hard-won wisdom and love. I am the Most Dangerous Thing doesn’t just use poetry to comment on life and history. The book is a comment on writing itself.” I am very intrigued!
apocrifa by Amber Flame (May 2023)
This book with a gorgeous cover is “a nongendered love story told in verse.” It’s the follow-up to Amber Flame’s full-length debut, Ordinary Cruelty.
Forever Is Now by Mariama J. Lockington (May 2023)
Technically, this one is a YA novel-in-verse, but I thought it would be fun to include! It centers a Black queer teen who has chronic anxiety, and that cover? Gorgeous.
I Do Everything I’m Told by Megan Fernandes (June 2023)
Tin House stays putting out some of the best poetry collections in the game! I’m looking forward to this one from a poet whose work I’ve loved. The publisher describes the book thusly: “Across four sections, poems navigate the terrain of queer, normative, and ambiguous intimacies with a frank intelligence.”
Shrines by Sagaree Jain (June 2023)
Former Autostraddle contributor Sagaree Jain has a new book of poems coming out with Game Over Books, and it sounds great! From the publisher: “SHRINES is half queer coming of age tale, half a mad dash to ecstasy, all pulsing with effervescent joy.” Plus, it was blurbed by K-Ming Chang, and that’s always gonna be a yes for me.
Because You Were Mine by Brionne Janae (July 2023)
Brionne Janae’s lines made it into Dani Janae’s list of 25 lines of poetry she thinks about every day, which published earlier this National Poetry Month, and rightfully so. The upcoming book is about queer love, family, trauma, and community.
Alt-Nature by Saretta Morgan (February 2024)
Listen, I know this doesn’t come out until 2024, but it’s never too early to preorder a book! A hack I’ve used in the past if I know there’s a possibility I’ll move before the pub date but still want to get an early preorder in is to have it sent to a friend’s place or my place of work when I used to work in an office. This upcoming collection is being put out by Coffee House Press and promises: “Sense-expanding poems that bring into relief the histories, landscapes, social ecologies, and Black queer femme experience of the southwestern United States, finding language to speak to the violences that accompany environmental degradation, settler-colonialism, globalized/ing militarism, and forms of incarceration.”
8 Poets With New Queer Books To Check Out This National Poetry Month
I need you to know that whenever I share a post about poetry, at least two hours of tears have gone into it because! There’s so much great poetry! My life has been irrevocably changed for the better and the important and the necessary by just one glance a poet has made at me five years ago! I am absolutely feral over poetry, and it overwhelms me so much that I often leave it, just so I can have some semblance of control over myself and the way this special interest beats in me like my heart’s big brother. If I’ve given you one recommendation, I’ve held back from giving 15. And even then, I will (with your permission) text you all the ones I forgot because I could not make my brain work fast enough to open the catalogues of my heart while we were catching up at Starbucks.
Anyways, here’s eight poets with new books that you should be on the lookout for this month! (And check like, every small press possible as there are so many deals to be had this month (like Button Poetry, Game Over Books, Ghost City Press, Haymarket Books, and YesYes Books). Imagine, more poetry books both in your home and on your hard drive! A dream come true that certainly will not take over your life in any way shape or form. *wink* *blink*)
1. Negative Money by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram (they/them) is a writer with experience in poetry, prose, and essays. They are a Cave Canem Fellow, Bread Loaf Writers Conference Fellow, and is Associate Professor of English, Africana Studies, and Art & Design at Northeastern University.
Read: “Two Poems” in The Account
Follow: On Instagram
2. Freedom House: Poems by K.B. Brookins
K.B. Brookins (they/them) is a Black, queer, and trans writer. A National Endowment of the Arts Fellow, they won the 2022 Academy of American Poets Climate Action prize for their poem “Good Grief” (linked below). Their memoir, Pretty, is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf.
Read: “Good Grief” in poets.org
Follow: On Twitter and Instagram
3. Explodingly Yours by Chen Chen
Though Chen Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency came out last September (which you should also read), I need you to grab Explodingly Yours for the simple fact that this has to have one of the gayest covers I’ve ever witnessed and we should share in that joyous celebration together.
Chen Chen edits the lickety split, an online poetry project hosted through Twitter (each poem is the length of one tweet).
Read: “I’m not a religious person but” in Poetry Foundation
Follow: On Twitter and Instagram
4. The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On by Franny Choi
Franny Choi is a Ruth/Lilly Stenberg Fellow and someone who’s reading/class/any virtual presence I always sign up for. I just finished reading this book yesterday. The Libby app (please tell me if you’re in the United States that you love yourself and you have this) tells me I spent 27 minutes reading this book cover to cover, but I know it’s tak(en)(ing) me at least 13 lifetimes. I will not shut up about this book I need everyone to carry this book into battle, into softness, into hope with them, right now and forever amen.
Read: “How to Let Go of the World” in PEN
Follow: On Twitter
5. A DEAD NAME THAT LEARNED HOW TO LIVE Golden
Golden (they/them) is a Pink Door Fellow, an Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Luminaries Fellow, and have a BFA in Photography & Imaging from New York University. A curator and community organizer, they are a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in Transgender Poetry for their book, A DEAD NAME THAT LEARNED HOW TO LIVE, and have won awards for their photography series documenting Black trans people across the United States, titled, On Learning How To Live.
Read: “Two Poems” in Apogee
Follow: On Instagram
6. Trace Evidence by Charif Shanahan
Charif Shanahan (he/him) is the author of Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing, a Lambda Literary Finalist in Gay Poetry, and the aforementioned Trace Evidence: Poems. I started reading this book about a week ago when I was nearly blackout drunk, triggered, and quite honestly not super present. There were few things I felt I could use to ground myself and I hadn’t read a poetry book in a long while. But while I was scrolling through Libby to distract myself, I was shocked that this one was available already. I started reading, and I know in no small part, this book helped me make it to the other side of whatever terrible I’d landed myself in.
Read: “If I Am Alive To”
Follow: On Twitter and Instagram
7.CRUEL/CRUEL by Dior J. Stephens
Dior J. Stephens (he/they) is Managing Poetry Editor for Foglifter and a Cave Canem and Lambda Literary Arts Fellow. I just need y’all to know that I came across him recently when they came across my “write on” timeline on Twitter and I am BEYOND EXCITED to get my hands on CRUEL/CRUEL (LIKE COME ON, TITLE!).
Read: “Two Poems” in Peach Mag
Follow: On Twitter
8. Dream of the Divided Field: Poems by Yanyi
Yanyi (he/him) is an Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Poet House fellow, winner of the 2018 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. Former poetry editor of Foundry, he holds an MFA in Poetry from New York State University. He teaches creative writing.
Read: “Landscape With A Hundred Turns” in poets.org
Follow: On Instagram
Though these aren’t within the last year, I think it’s important to also note Troubling The Line edited by Trace Peterson and TC Colbert, who, when I was having one of the toughest times figuring out my gender identity — see, a glance! — and which has been a source of strength for these pandemic years and We Want It All: An Anthology of Trans Poetics edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel and both from Nightboat Books.)
You don’t have to stop at this list! Luther Hughes (buy A Shiver in the Leaves ) is a black queer poet and organizer who, every year, makes a list of forthcoming poetry books from queer poets of color. Be sure to donate to Shade Literary Arts so they can keep doing this amazing work!
25 Lines of Poetry I Think About Once a Day
feature image photo by jakkapan21 via Getty Images
I spend most of my free time thinking about poetry. Whether it’s because I’ve just written my own poem or just read someone else’s, there is so much to mull over when it comes to form. What I love the most in a poem is its ability to surprise me, to turn a phrase, to flip the script, to say something that I didn’t see coming. In the way that if you guess the twist in a horror movie ruins the movie for you, the same can ruin a poem for me.
I read a lot of poetry, so there are probably hundreds of lines I could recall that strike me in one way or another. It’s National Poetry Month, so I become a poetry hound, sniffing out new books and revisiting old ones, finding solace, rage, love, and beauty in some of the words crafted by writers I truly admire.
These aren’t necessarily my top 25 lines, these are just the ones I could recall today. I hope they do something for you as they have brought me immense pleasure (and sometimes an understanding of pain) that I hadn’t experienced until I read these lines.
1. “as we both know,/if you worship/one god, you only need/One enemy—”
from Witchgrass by Louise Glück
I think about this line (I’m counting this as one line, sue me) so so much. Even the opening lines: “something comes into the world unwelcome, calling disorder, disorder” kind of haunt me. Any poet will tell you the first line has to have grip, and this poem doesn’t disappoint.
The thing about this specific line is that I’m not entirely sure what the exact meaning is. It makes sense, but my mind is grasping at something deeper that it cannot access when I read it. Maybe that’s why the line sticks with me, it resists a neat and definable meaning.
2. “I wash the silk and silt of her from my hands—/now who I come to, I come clean to, I come good to.”
from Grief Work by Natalie Diaz
“Grief Work” is one of my favorite Natalie Diaz poems, and I have written about these lines before. I think about coming to someone clean and good, and it takes my breath away because I have come to many people at my worst for many years. I like to think I am good now, but there is so much growth left in me.
3. “i’m hurt that you would ever think/ i don’t glisten to you i’m always glistening”
from You Can Take Off Your Sweater, I’ve Made Today Warm by Paige Lewis
This poem knocked me down when I first read it, especially this line. See my point about surprising the reader? You think the obvious word is coming and then it doesn’t. So stunning.
4. “I wished for a place big enough for grief/& all I got was more grief, plus People magazine.”
from How I Became Sagacious by Chen Chen
What I love about Chen Chen’s work but especially in this collection, When I Grow Up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities, is the surprise and humor in it. It’s funny that People magazine shows up out of nowhere, it’s funny that when you want a way out of grief there is only more grief. Funny in a resigned sigh kind of way, not funny hahaha.
5. “I wake up & it breaks my heart”
from Meditations in an Emergency from Cameron Awkward-Rich
Truly incredible how this poem manages to break me open and put me back together in the same breath. I love this poem, and this is the opening line, making it a poem I come back to when I wake up and my heart is broken, which is often.
6. “Ickle, Ockle, Blue Bockle,/Fishes in the Sea./If You Want a Left Wife,/Please Choose Me.”
from Left-Wife Goose by Sharon Olds
Stag’s Leap is full of fucking bangers, but I think about this line the most. The lines “had a sow twin, had a reap twin/had a husband, could not keep him” are also so fucking gut punchy like jesus Sharon! I’ve never been divorced, but I feel like Left Wife when I read this poem.
7. “Show me one beast/ that loves itself as relentlessly/as even the most miserable man./ I’ll wait.”
from There Is No Such Thing As An Accident of the Spirit by Kaveh Akbar
If Kaveh Akbar has 1000 fans, I am one of them. If Kaveh Akbar has 0 fans, I am dead. This whole book (Pilgrim Bell, 2021) is a treasure but boyyyy this poem is so lovely. These lines are one I wish I would have written.
8. “She bites into a pear and every pearl/in the world releases its oyster”
from Frequently Asked Questions #4 by Camille T. Dungy
The power and imagery here is just beyond. BEYOND!
9. “I loved you before I was born/it doesn’t make sense, I know”
from I Loved You Before I Was Born by Li-Young Lee
Is there anything to be said here? Like oh my god. Okay, I will say this line reminds me of a lyric from one of my favorite songs, “Slow Show” by The National.
“You know I dreamed about you for 29 years before I saw you”
This is art! There is poetry in everything! What a world!
10. “And in the aftermath the brother simply—flourished. The trees simply—bloomed.”
from Untitled by Diana Khoi Nyugen (Ghost of, 2018)
I’m listing the collection this poem appears in because the poem doesn’t have a title. And wow, this poem. If it’s possible to spoil the premise of a book of poems, I won’t do that here, but when you read this book, when you get to these lines, it’s going to hurt.
11. “You loved and were loved/said the bee to the lily/before it buzzed off.”
from A New Dawn by Mary Ruefle
This poem appears in Dunce, and if you can, you should get this book. I love this poem so much, and these lines that state a simple truth for many of us, as played out by a bee and a lily. Poets, man.
12. “What if I want to go devil instead?”
from Late Summer After a Panic Attack by Ada Limón
Whomst among us has not wanted to devil from time to time? I, a Scorpio, can certainly relate.
13. “when it is too late to pray the end of the flood/we pray instead to survive it.”
from Child’s Pose by Brionne Janae
Janae’s recognize Janae’s and so I like this poem a lot on that front, but this line? Woo. Wipe the sweat off your brow kind of pressure. It really made me ache in a new way when I first read it.
14. “Christ bore what suffering he could and died/a young man, but you waited years to learn/how to heal.”
from Pity by Camille T. Dungy
Please come get me off this floor.
15. “whatever/returns from oblivion returns/to find a voice”
from The Wild Iris by Louise Glück
This line has come to me at some of the worst times in my life and spurred me forward. That’s the power of Glück.
16. “Tonight I think/no poetry/will serve”
from Tonight No Poetry Will Serve by Adrienne Rich
Is it cheating to choose the titular line? I don’t know, but I think about this line a lot when I’m in love and down bad and longing for someone. Because even at its best moments sometimes even poetry isn’t enough.
17. “I am less of myself and more of the sun”
from Flash by Hazel Hall
I think this was once Poem-a-day at poets dot org and one day I had a really big rough time at therapy so stopped to get an almond butter brownie at the cafe/bookstore next door, and a book of poems by Hazel Hall nearly lept off the shelf at me. Sometimes the world gives you just what you need.
18. “Be a dream, a mezzanine/sesame seeds at the bottom of the package,”
from Presence by Nikola Madzirov
Because, why not be sesame seeds? Life can be that simple if we let it.
19. “I will bear him wherever I am taken/and no one will kill him and he will not die.”
from Self-Portrait as a Door by Donika Kelly
Has the end of a poem ever made you burst into tears, because this one did it for me. This whole book is achy and devastating but this? This is another level.
20. “for the full lips swelled, a dark/fruit bloomed under my/fingers”
from When I Touched Her by Toi Derricotte
I’m sure there are a few dykes reading this so I know y’all know, but the way this poem takes me back to the first time should be studied. It so effortlessly and beautifully captures the feeling of being with someone new.
21. “Goodest grief is an orchard you know. But you have not been killed/Once. Angel, put that on everything. Self. Country. Stone. Bride.”
from Ghazal for Becoming Your Own Country by Angel Nafis
Something about “goodest grief.” Something about poems about grieving. Something about the ghazal. The title of this poem also just speaks to me and fills me up and makes me feel like not being my own country anymore.
22. “I want to buy you/a cobalt velvet couch/all your haters’ teeth/strung up like pearls”
from Want Could Kill Me by Xan Forest Phillips
As the owner of a green velvet couch and a Scorpio (not to rehash this point), but this speaks to me. I wanna wear my hater’s teeth something serious.
23. “I’m/the Vice President of panic and the President is/missing”
from On the train, a man snatches my book by Paige Lewis
There are so many things to panic about at any given moment living in America, and this line so expertly captures that feeling that many of us have succumbed to.
24. “In the age of loss there is/the dream of loss/in which, of course, I/am alive at the center—”
from About the Bees by Justin Phillip Reed
All I can think of when I read this poem is swarm, something alive at the center, maybe not for long at the center of a swarm. It’s so vivid and makes my skin crawl and I shove my shoulders up to my ears imagining it, but in like a cool way.
25. “For hunger is to give/the body what it knows/it cannot keep.”
from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Poets have so much to say about hunger, but I like this best.
What are your favorite lines from poems this National Poetry Month?
9 Poems to Read in These Trying Times
I know right now everything seems to be completely overwhelming, chaotic, lost, and up in the air. You, in turn, are probably feeling helpless and disoriented, not sure what is real or how to react to what you hear every day. The news cycle alternating between doom and gloom.
Since the onset of Coronavirus, I’ve been worried. For myself and for others that don’t have the means to handle a sudden sickness well, and let’s be honest, everyone who is handling it well seems to be massively rich celebrities and billionaires who can afford to get tested at a moment’s notice. It’s hard to conceive of what we can do during these times. Spending time in isolation is lonely, heading out despite the warnings puts others at risk. We feel inclined to spend all day scrolling on our phones, but staying obsessively caught up with what’s going on is unhealthy. The only things that seems to be certain are our fear and the fact that, after this moment, things will be forever changed.
Despite all of this, there are places for solace in such uncertainty. One place that I have found comfort before and continue to find it now is in poetry, the words of others who have experienced and seen unspeakable things and come out on the other side. I read the following poems when things are getting bleak for me; they are either inspiring or just downright beautiful. I hope you can find some comfort in them, too.
The Wild Iris — Louise Glück
“At the end of my suffering
there was a door.”
begins this powerful and resonate poem. Louise Glück is a poet who’s sharp lines and introspection can teach any novice writer a thing or two about craft. This poem is a persona poem, written from the voice of the named flower, but through excellent metaphor, Glück is able to make its message applicable to any living being. She is one of my favorite poets because she’s able to relay the harshness of reality in such measured and stunning lines, in a language that is both blunt but flowering. The poem goes on to add that:
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
Things come to an end so new beginnings can arise, our suffering is not fruitless. Not just suffering, but the things that challenge us, whether that be a global pandemic or personal troubles. Glück is one of my favorite poets because of the way she questions or sheds light on some of the more complicated facets of our humanity. The iris’ chief message is that we can come back from being decimated, and will often return to a much brighter future.
Try to Praise the Mutilated World — Adam Zagajewski
I often see this poem floating around Facebook after what some would consider a national tragedy. It is a mainstay because it is so powerful. The premise itself is simple, to praise the mutilated world means to try and find beauty in a time and place where there is loss and grief. To look at the things around you that can still bring joy and a feeling of togetherness when it feels like the world is falling apart. This poem gets chosen a lot because it revels in those small moments of joy, like a concert or tasting strawberries.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
I wouldn’t say that to despair is easy, to go out shopping and panic buy isn’t “easy” — its a natural reaction to an unprecedented situation (at least for Americans). People are scared and rightfully so. What helps, I think, is knowing there is something on the other side of fear. The hard thing is reaching for that other side without knowing exactly what we will pull toward us. Zagajewski comes from a generation of protest poets, poets that saw atrocities and decided they had not only to bear witness, but also act. It’s why people turn to poets like him when we’re shocked and at a loss for words and actions.
Diving Into the Wreck — Adrienne Rich
This may not be the first Rich poem that comes to mind for a topic like this but it’s one of my favorites. She is another poet whose activism is well known along with her creative work. In Sister Outsider, there is a great interview between Rich and Audre Lorde about their relationships to poetry that is worth a read. “Diving into the Wreck” is a poem about exploration and what we can find emerging from destruction.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
It takes the reader outside of themselves and into the world of the strange, elaborate creatures, mystery, and truth, not a myth. I come to this poem when I am feeling lust for breadth, to be encapsulated by water and sound. It is a long, deep slip into another universe and sometimes we need a little escapism.
Presence — Nikola Madzirov
One of the images from this poem that sticks with me comes in the beginning lines:
Put on the space suit of the night
and slice the apple in two
without damaging the seeds
The image of a deft hand slicing an apple without doing damage to the seeds conjures a kind of artful precision that carries throughout the poem. Madzirov is a Macedonian poet who I got the chance to meet my sophomore year of college and discuss the importance of art in times of trouble. This poem, for me, is a constant refrain and source of inspiration that I pull on when I find myself being pulled into a depression. I have also quoted this poem in a different piece for Autostraddle and it feels ever relevant as I move through my quarantined days. Especially these following lines:
Be a dream, a mezzanine,
sesame seeds at the bottom of the package,
a ‘deer’ sign by the road, an alphabet
known only to two people—
you and the one who doesn’t believe you.
These lines for me call the reader to be of surprise and splendor, no matter the circumstance they are in, whether or not they are believed. It is a poem that is surreal in its magic and reciting it to myself somehow makes me feel more grounded in the physical realm while taking my body into space. To be a dream is to become the life beyond our imagination, to be something incredible and beyond reality; to be a mezzanine is to be a part of where the art is made; to be the sesame seeds is to be that source of splendor, to not be forgotten.
Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude — Ross Gay
There are so many things that delight me about this poem, that take my breath away, that I couldn’t not put it on this list. It is as it says — a catalog of different gratitudes, some you may find strange and others you may agree with. There is no other way to describe it but as bursting with exuberance. When you read it, you can’t help but smile along with each line as a new joy is unraveled.
I am so grateful,
you could ride your bike there
or roller skate or catch the bus
there is a fence and a gate twisted by hand,
there is a fig tree taller than you in Indiana,
it will make you gasp.
It might make you want to stay alive even, thank you
Who among us wouldn’t be amazed by a fig tree taller than us? The beauty in this gratitude is something that is important to hold on to through times of trouble. Even as I am frustrated by the actions of politicians and corporations, I am in awe of the creativity of my friends and family. I’m grateful for the sun and rain, for pictures of my niece, for pineapple juice and turmeric. This poem, this poem. It will make you cling to what you are grateful for as well.
The end and the Beginning — Wislawa Szymborska
Szymborska is a poet of high regard because of her ability to bring history and the mundane domestic together in the same room. That history is often brutal, fraught with war and death. A Polish poet like Zagajewski, Szymborska is no stranger to witnessing hardship. Many of her works have been translated into English, making us lucky enough to read and witness a masterful poet at work.
The poem itself deals with the heavy topic of cleaning up after a war, and while it is not the same, I can’t help but think of the doctors and nurses and healthcare workers who are at work now struggling to make sure people survive. Surely many of us have heard stories of overworked nurses running away to cry in a secluded area, or seen doctors with bruises on their faces due to hours of wearing protective gear. “The end and the Beginning” conjures those images for me.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
The poem ends with these lines because they seem so out of step with the rest of the piece. This person spoken of at the end of the poem seems to be completely ignorant of the scenes around him but is also taking a moment to appreciate the beauty around him. The poem does not make him a villain but earlier lines, “Those who knew/ what was going on here/ must make way for/ those who know little,” suggest that in the future he will learn of the events and be changed by them, as those who have been busy around him have. Whether you are one of those cleaning up or someone looking into the clouds, this poem will resonate with you, as well as the rest of Szymborska’s work.
How Can Black People Write About Flowers At a Time Like This — Hanif Abdurraqib
Questions like these are often poised in the face of tragedy. How can you laugh, smile, and go on while x injustice is happening around you? It is a hard question to answer, hard to justify dipping your toes into elegance when there is destruction. But, how can we not? There is this prevailing idea that we all must mourn and do our grief work in the same way, to be solemn and weighted in order to be respectful to the loss. Abdurraquib challenges this idea in his poem.
dear reader, with our heels digging into the good mud at a swamp’s edge, you might tell me something about the dandelion & how it is not a flower itself but a plant made up of several small flowers at its crown & lord knows I have been called by what I look like more than I have been called by what I actually am
Black people know a thing or two about adversity, injustice, and being “called by what I look like more than I have been called by what I actually am.” In the face of brutality and fierce cruelty, we are often the first to laugh and make art. There is no better time to make art. We see how important art is in these times. Look around at how many of us are reading, watching television or movies, engaging with different facets of media in one way or another. The poet expertly argues for poems about flowers and “fashioning something pretty out of seeds refusing to make anything worthwhile of their burial.”
Gacela of the Unforeseen Love — Federico Garcia Lorca
translated by W. S. Merwin
There is never a bad time to read a love poem. Many poets and readers would turn to Naruda’s Odes when thinking of the perfect love poem, but I can’t help but think of this one by Federico Garcia Lorca. It is a poem rich with desire and warmth, the kind of warmth that feeds your bones down to the marrow. The lines I come back to are: “I sought in my heart to give you/the ivory letters that say always, always, always.”
A thousand Persian ponies fell asleep
in the moonlit plaza of your forehead
while through four nights I embraced
your waist, enemy of the snow.
So why a love poem? Because love is so important at a juncture where we are isolated, left to ourselves in our home offices or our jobs lost. I know it sounds hokey and a little corny but to love one another is everything. Not just to love with our hearts but to love one another enough to fight for each other. Whether that means contributing to any of the many funds for artists and those who were left unemployed as a result of this pandemic or calling a friend who needs to hear your voice. It means supporting workers who are going on strike for better treatment and those that have to deal with the swath of new rules and regulations that have been thrust upon them as they work. Love is greater than just saying the word, and so is a love poem.
What it looks like to us and the words we use — Ada Limón
The unexpected side effect of times like these is that they make us crave connection with those we love more than ever. With the absolute need for social distancing, our want for human connection increases. Limón gets at this need for togetherness in this poem, as well as highlighting the breathtaking landscape of her natural world.
You don’t believe in God? And I said,
No. I believe in this connection we all have
to nature, to each other, to the universe.
And she said, Yeah, God. And how we stood there,
low beasts among the white oaks, Spanish moss,
and spider webs, obsidian shards stuck in our pockets,
woodpecker flurry, and I refused to call it so.
Even though the speaker and their companion have some differences over the presence of God, they are still together and marveling at what lies above and around them. Whether that be the spider webs are the “unruly sky” littered with clouds that take shape in front of their eyes. To be together despite differences is a precious thing that cannot be understated. With rules around social distancing, the idea of being “together” has taken a different shape, but has reminded us of how precious companionship is.
As the next few weeks unravel in front of us, along with the uncertainty and fear come along with it, I hope these poets become a refuge for you. If not, let them be a balm and a beauty to break through the onslaught of negative news. As you go about your days consuming whatever art you enjoy the most, remember the artist and writers that make these things possible and send thanks in whatever way you can.
FRIDAY OPEN THREAD: Happy National Poetry Month, Let’s Share Our Favorite Poems!
feature image via Unsplash
It’s April, and I’m here today to talk to you about National Poetry Month because what else do I even care so deeply about?
Poetry is, if we’re being as literal as possible, my life’s energy, homies. Langston Hughes has been my childhood love since my mom brought home a small booklet that had I, Too in it, I say the last lines even now, even now. When I was eight or nine and nervous about sitting next to a stranger on the airplane, my mom (who was sitting behind me) and I wrote the starts of poems the other had to finish, Post-Its clutched then shared between our finger tips. Poems got me through depression, anxiety, coming out, being rejected for coming out, coming out again and again, suicidality and the wrong diagnoses. Rachel McKibbens’ line, “When grief takes hold of you/you monster through it” (Oedipus) got me through intensive outpatient therapy and Panera and their hands and everything worse. Rachel McKibbens gave me the chance to say what I needed to say to my grandma when she was dying and dead and my family would not leave the hospital room to give the two of us privacy. Rachel McKibbens got me to Pink Door in 2015 when all my want was stolen and all the traces left just ended in voices repeating die, die, die. Pink Door gave me ways to unstick my words, yes, but also brought me poetry that gave me community and family and a reason to try.
I’m not going to lie to you: I’ve been really lost as of late and it’s not getting better soon. But I’m trying and the stanzas are pulling me through.
I want to share some of my favorite poems with you. And then maybe you can share some of your favorite poems with me?
“That’s how I participate in other people’s work. I carry it. The most important poems for us are the ones we carry.” – Ocean Vuong
Look in my front pocket and I got these (with first lines):
“Here, the sentence will be respected.”
38 by Layli Long Soldier
“i pledge allegiance to my/homies”
i pledge allegiance to no land by Safia Elhillo
“It’s hard for me to believe, but, believe/I do”
Omen To Get Your Ass Up by Angel Nafis
“Adam ate an apple”
(After God Herself) by Justice Ameer
“say it with your whole black mouth: i am innocent”
say it with your whole black mouth by Danez Smith
“I don’t know how to write a poem in metaphors anymore”
THE FBI USES MY PRONOUNS CORRECTLY WHEN THEY SEARCH MY APARTMENT FOR EVIDENCE by Linette Reeman
“I will not shoot myself”
Bullet Points by Jericho Brown
I get if poetry’s not your jam (though I’m one of those people who also believes music is poetry so feel free to insert that here instead), so go ahead and tell me whatever you wanna share, even if it’s not a poem! What’d you have for breakfast that lowkey set your soul on fire? Who’s coming over that you’re pretending you’re not super excited about but you’re gonna stop pretending cause your authentic self is more than enough and it’s a gift that both you and anyone around you gets to experience that? I wanna hear what you’re into this month! What’s got your heart like “finally a reason to stick around?”
Get in here and let me know, I’m so excited about you!!
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National Poetry Month: YaliniDream Opens Spaces and Hearts
In honor of National Poetry Month, Autostraddle is highlighting the great work of a queer women poet we think you’ll love each Monday of the month.
“Even after the storyteller is assassinated, the story continues and can never be captured,” performance poet YaliniDream says in her poem “I Choose Peace.”
Yalini’s belief in storytelling to create space for people of marginalized identities who are navigating oppression and diaspora forms the motivation for her writing, performance and collaborations with other artists. She is, as she says, of “Lankan Tamil blood, Manchester-Born, Texas Bred and Brooklyn Steeped.” At UT Austin, she studied theater and Plan II (a squiggly, wonderful liberal arts major that I also did!) and began to engage in radical activism and examine how to use art to inform her politics and vise versa. These days, she’s based in Brooklyn and travels around the world to perform poetry, theater and other arts and create workshops and dialogues around feminism, queer identity, race, nonviolent resistance, art and more.
She’s involved in several performance collaborations, including her current project called DreamWolf with her partner Jendog Lonewolf. They travel to war affected parts of Sri Lanka and to other countries as well as to universities and community projects in the U.S. They just finished engagements at Stanford and in Oakland and San Francisco, and at Hampshire College and Syracuse University. They will perform at the War Resisters’ International Conference in South Africa this July.
YaliniDream and Jendog Lonewolf. Photos by Jendog Lonewolf
Yalini and I chatted today about her history, activism and art, and how all three inform each other.
How did you get started as an activist and artist?
I started participating in and doing children’s theater at age 12. When I went to study theater at UT, I was cast in a mainstage play my freshman year, and after that I was always called back but never cast. There were very few roles for people of color. I co-founded a theater company of color called the Drive By Players. Around the same time, I had started being involved in the student movement to establish Asian American Studies on campus. I engaged in a lot of the student movements happening at that time. In Drive By Players we started writing our own stories, and we moved beyond the academy and got more involved with what was happening in the community. Professor Stephen Gerald directed me to a writing workshop Sharon Bridgforth was conducting. Through her I became connected to the underground hip hop and spoken word communities in Austin. It all really came together when I was in Austin.
How did you turn your converging passions for theater, writing and activism into a career? How do you balance rejecting capitalism with a need to get paid for your work?
I moved to New York in 2000. As a young person in theater, you always think “New York is the place to be.” I was blessed to get oriented to NYC by a mostly Queer South Asian crew of badass New Yorkers who were the driving forces of the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective, including Bushra Rehman, Chitra Ganesh, and DJ Rekha. I also met D’Lo, a super dope and inspiring Transgender Sri Lankan Tamil American Writer/Actor/Comedian. Since I graduated from university, my entire life has been built around creating and presenting and evolving my work. I also work as a teaching artist. But the reality of many working artists is they need to supplement their artistic income through other means. The pickup work is raced and classed and gendered as well – a lot of it has been babysitting, administrative work and bartending. A lot of people take advantage of and exploit artists, especially if you’re from a marginalized gender or you’re a person of color. You have to push back and say “our work is important, it’s important to our society that independent artists are compensated for our work.”
How does your Sri Lankan heritage and family inform your work?
My parents would much rather me not talk about sexuality. It’s such a new conversation, and they think it’s dangerous. Our entire family has to deal with the homophobia. It’s such a small community, people talk. It’s a stigma that impacts our entire family. At the same time I feel like I have the ability to talk about it much more publicly than so many people in our community, and I feel I have a responsibility for all the gender nonconforming and queer people, for anybody who is not adhering to the norm, to use whatever tools I have, whatever power, whatever ability, to crack open the space so there is more room for all the people in our community. I have to go about it carefully. If we stay silent, we stay complicit with the injustices that exist within our communities.
How do you use your work to speak specifically to Sri Lankans around the world?
I’ve performed everywhere from living rooms to convents to refugee camps, in a women’s shelter, wherever I can get in. Within the Sri Lankan Tamil community, certain conversations around gender and sexuality are still very new, especially around queer sexuality. Northern and eastern Sri Lanka was in civil war for 30 years that ended horrifically in 2009. I feel as though we haven’t reached a just peace in Sri Lanka. What militarization does is it really shrinks the space for civil society movements. There have been incredible feminists and incredible people who are queer or different gendered who have done amazing work, but the dominant nationalisms that rule really narrow that space. A lot of my work is about opening hard conversations in spaces where those conversations haven’t had much room. Politics. Identities. What has happened during the war? So for me, storytelling is such a powerful and necessary tool. How can we reach people’s hearts, how can we open those spaces where things are so narrow and so difficult and give us a little bit of space to have hard conversations? How do we meet people where they are at? I am from a community that has gone through so much, so it’s important for me to recognize where people are at, meet them were they are at, and open that space, so that our community can evolve and make room for all the different people in our community.
What about poetry is so important? How can it be a tool to combat oppression and open up space?
What I love about being a poet vs a politician is I can dream and ask for the ideal, I can say “this is what’s right and this is what’s wrong and this is what’s needed.” I can hold onto what is precious about our ancient and push society forward to evolve and become less violent, less harmful, more loving, more accepting, more magical. Poetry can serve as a beautiful vehicle for the mind. But I also feel that poetry is expressed not just with words but with movement, through song.
Why is performance poetry in particular so vibrant and vital? How do you use performance to further your political and activist goals?
I ended up taking advantage of the fact that I was on the margins. I felt like it turned out to be a really powerful position because I was seen as a woman who didn’t really have any power and it was easy to dismiss me, and queerness was something that’s invisible. I used the power of invisibility to crack open spaces at the edges. The power of performance is impermanence — nobody could catch it and say “here’s proof of what she is saying or doing.” You can introduce ideas through performance and slowly open conversations and help people question what they had been taught to believe. I think that’s what’s so magical and interesting. I was able to be able to do that work undetected. When journalists and other soothsayers of the written word are outcast, starved, threatened, jailed, murdered and silenced, the performed word becomes the communities’ breaths– ephemeral nourishment resuscitating truth.
National Poetry Month: Denice Frohman Slams Down Oppression With Survival Poetry
In honor of National Poetry Month, Autostraddle is highlighting the great work of a queer women poet we think you’ll love each Monday of the month.
Denice Frohman‘s poems aren’t just beautiful, powerful words — though they certainly are that. They are her history, her politics, her pain, her love and her future. In putting all that into words, Frohman shares tools, ideas and empowerment with all who hear her. Her poem “Dear Straight People” went viral on the internet right when I started dating my first girlfriend. As I navigated being visibly queer for the first time, the poem gave me hope and strength, as did knowing so many other people were hearing it too.
Frohman writes about her family, her students and her communities. With these stories, she digs into the heart of oppressions and reveals clues and asks questions about how to destroy them.
At a young age, Frohman is an award winning poet, lyricist and educator. She won the Women of the World Poetry Slam in 2013, was an invited guest at the White House in 2011, and her activist poetry duo Sister Outsider, in which she teams up with fellow WOWPS champion Dominique Christina, is changing the game for radical and activist poetry. Her debut album Feels Like Home combines her poetry with work of musicians from her home Philadelphia and is available now. She is working on her first book. She answered a few questions for Autostraddle about her work and what poetry and identity mean to her.
What first led you to poetry? How did you get started slamming and writing more seriously
A lot of people are surprised to learn that I didn’t like poetry in high school. Mainly because I wasn’t exposed to poets that looked or sounded like me in school. It gave me the impression that poetry was not an inclusive art form. That, obviously, was a lie. I always loved hip-hop and found a love of language through that, which led me to spoken word. When I discovered spoken word a whole new world opened up for me. I spent years writing and performing without ever slamming. I wanted to develop my voice outside of the competition first. That said I didn’t start slamming until 2010.
What makes poetry an effective medium to explore intersections of identity and oppression?
Because it gives a platform for the personal to be political. To get up on stage and share our experiences, our stories, our ideas, and just pour our hearts out allows connections to be made in real-time. I think it helps us view each other as fully human. In other words, rather than interacting with issues, so to speak, we are interacting with people. As writers and performers, poetry asks us to be as honest as possible. To say the thing that has been boiling inside of us. To give it a home. It’s the way we talk back to the thing that has hurt us. It’s also the way we say we have always been here and that we survive. The very act of speaking becomes revolutionary, particularly when speaking about intersections of identity and oppression, because of the ways in which we’ve been silenced.
Related – why are so many queer women interested in poetry as readers and writers? What is the slam poetry world like for a queer woman today?
I think particularly for queer women, visibility is a sensitive, but important thing for us – both as individuals and as a community. Spoken word is a very visible art form so it makes a lot of sense. Because society assigns folks a heterosexual identity from the very beginning that then requires a “coming out,” (and when I say “coming out,” I mean that as a constant act and not a one time event), I think we want to be heard and seen for who we are and who we are not. The slam poetry world is welcoming to hearing our voices I think for the most part – but as in any other community we are still a microcosm of a greater society so there is still work to be done.
How does poetry function as a tool for activism and justice work, especially in your work with Sister Outsider?
Sister Outsider has quickly become one of the most important parts of my work. This year, Dominique Christina, an award-winning, poet, educator, activist, and two time Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion),and I paired up as a group to go on a national tour. It’s the first time that two WOWPS champions have ever paired up. We’ve visited over 35 college campuses this year – performing, teaching workshops, and engaging in really important conversations around race, gender, sexuality, “otherness,” rape culture, and how language and identity interact. Poetry for us is a tool of survival and resistance. Our work is as diverse as our identities so we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to speak to a lot of different communities. College campuses and schools across the country are dealing with very real issues of social justice, so it’s been great to engage students, administrators and faculty committed to creating environments that are inclusive and safe. We are planning our next tour now and looking to also include international schools.
You write a lot about family. “Accents” and “Abuela’s Dance” are two of my favorite poems on the album. How has your family influenced you as a writer and activist? What do they think of your career
I think a lot of my influences as a writer and activist came from other communities and experiences, but I think that my family’s love of music definitely has had an influence on me and my style. They’re happy that I’m doing what I love and support me the best they can.
via denicefrohman.com
“Dear Straight People” was all over the internet last year after you won WOWPS. What’s the story behind that poem?
That poem was born out of being harassed too many times on the street. I had two particularly bad experiences where I was harassed in front of my house and it just set me off. I tell people that that poem was born out of anger and just something I needed to get out. I was upset that I was being made to feel like public spaces didn’t belong to LGBTQ folks. I didn’t realize it at the time but it opened up a pandoras box of experiences and frustrations with homophobia, straight privilege, and the ways in which LGBTQ folks are harassed for being visible and unapologetic.
Can you tell me a little about your writing process? Where do you draw inspiration? Is there a difference in writing for page and stage for you?
I am constantly learning about my writing process but I’ve learned that I write best if I do less editing during the first phase and more purging. Also, it’s best for me to write as soon as I can when the urge comes on. I don’t always do that but typically that’s where the most organic writing lives. I draw inspiration from experiences that affect me, my communities, my students in a way that attempts to silence us or tell us we are not valuable. A lot of my writing is about naming that and countering that by celebrating our resilience and beauty. I want people to know they matter. I want us to know our history. I want us to not apologize for who we are.
What advice do you want to give to young queer women with an interest in writing and/or performing poetry?
Do it! Focus on being honest and locating your silences. That’s often where the transformational writing lives. Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable. Poetry calls us into ourselves. It’s asking you to be truthful and say whatever it is you need to say. I also encourage folks to read as much as possible, because that’s how you learn what is possible with language. At the same time, it’s important to not copy what others are doing but to draw inspiration from them – the kind that asks you to dig deeper. Watching others is important, but stay true to you and your voice.
What’s next for you? Any new albums, books or other projects on the horizon?
The next big thing for me is to work on my first book of poetry, which has been a long time coming and to plan the next Sister Outsider tour for 2014-2015.
Anything else you think AS readers would want to know about you, poetry, or the universe?
You are beautiful. Know that. Every day.
National Poetry Month: Lauren Zuniga Will Lull You Awake
In honor of National Poetry Month, Autostraddle is highlighting the great work of a queer women poet we think you’ll love each Monday of the month.
The first time Lauren Zuniga ever performed in a poetry slam in 1999, she won $12, two cigarettes and a condom. Today, she makes her living selling poetry books, touring and leading workshops. In between she married a man, had two kids, divorced, and began dating women and identifying as queer.
Zuniga is a mom, an activist, and a leader in Oklahoma City’s arts community. Plus, Autostraddle thinks she’s pretty hot. In 2012, she published the poetry collection The Smell of Good Mud on Write Bloody Publishing, home to many queer poets including our beloved Andrea Gibson. The book is full of questions and fear, yet the end result feels pointedly optimistic. As much as all this shit — this oppression, this racism, this terror — sucks right now, it will get better, and so will we. Her poems about identity, parenting, her radical housing cooperative and politics make me believe it is ok that I haven’t figured it all out, and that maybe I will eventually.
As powerful and lovely as her written poems are, she truly shines as a reader and performer. She has traveled to every state in the U.S. except Hawaii to read poems about topics like sex:
family and marriage:
and the capitalist, racist oppression of the prison industrial complex:
They will all make you shiver.
I got a chance to Skype with Zuniga while she waited for a flight in the Corpus Christi airport and I sat in a Managua coffee shop. These were both uncomfortable places to say words like “queer” and “lesbian” over and over again, but if it were comfortable none of it would be nearly as fun.
via laurenzuniga.com
What kinds of things inspire you to write poems?
I just started working on a piece that’s a mash up of Neil Degrasse Tyson and Nicki Minaj. I was watching Cosmos and flipped the channel to The Fabulous Life of Nicki Minaj, and I thought, “what if I did a mashup or a battle poem.” And since then I’ve been listening to hours of Neil Degrasse Tyson and hours of Nicki Minaj. It’s been a weird research process, because basically Neil Degrasse Tyson is saying, “I’m so small, we’re so small” versus Nicki Minaj saying “I’m so big, I’m so big, my dick is so huge.”
What’s it like being a queer poet in very conservative Oklahoma?
Socially and politically it’s difficult obviously, for example as of right now I couldn’t marry my girlfriend if I wanted to even though it would be nice to have some health care benefits. But I like to be there because I feel like its where I’m the most useful. I feel the work I do is not drowning in a sea of lots of other people just like me and I feel like my presence there makes an impact. My network is so supportive so it’s hard to even be mad at it. Because the main culture is so oppressive, the counterculture has to be extremely creative. You find your pockets of people that are doing amazing things. And anything that I do, people just show up for it. It’s unreal. I can’t imagine being in another city where there’s so much going on, it’s unreal. You’ll see Wayne Coyne just walking down the street.
You write a lot about the words you use to identify your sexuality, your relationships and your partners. Let’s talk about that!
I like to make up words and I always ask students to teach me new words that they’ve made up. This is how I learned the word Dage: to get day drunk. I feel like we are living in a time where we are creating new realities so fast our old language isn’t equipped to handle it. Also, when you name a thing, it makes it less scary. I tried to explain my sexuality to someone on Tumblr once and it led me to making up the word GEBO. It stands for Gender Expression Behavior Orientation. You know, it’s our unique combination of gender/sexuality plus how we like to do power, sex and relationships. I also like to say it stands for:
Give Everyone Bigger Options
Gay is Everyone Being Open
Gold Echoes Bright Oceans
Grown Emotional Babes Offering
Glorious Ever Blooming Orgasms
Gorgeous Evenings Bent OverI think the queer community is especially good at making up our own language so I just wanted to share that new word and hopefully other Autostraddle readers will share words that they’ve made up to make sense of their bodies and desires.
Why do you think so many performance poets are queer women? What about poetry attracts queer ladies as readers, writers and performers?
When I first started [again in 2007], I was really nervous about coming out. I was out in my family and community here, but not so much in the poetry community. That seems weird to me know, because it is so queer. When I wrote the book I didn’t realize it was queer, I didn’t realize that’s what it was until Write Bloody packaged it that way, and I was really nervous. But Andrea Gibson told me, “There aren’t very many femme queer moms that are out there speaking out and saying poems.” Especially in the audiences and rooms that I’m in. Now I can’t imagine it any other way, but at the time it was a bit of a hurdle. I would imagine that there’s a certain, just, expansive way of being that most queer women are that also lends itself really well to being a poet and vice versa. The way we navigate the planet is often very fluid and open and all consuming. They seem kind of hand in hand.
How do you balance traveling and motherhood?
I am lucky that I have a really amazing support system. Their father is actively involved in their life, and my mom, my family, we have a whole team of people. My girlfriend is there. Everyone is involved. I feel like they’re ok, but I miss them so much so it’s hard. But I get to be home often enough, and from May to September I don’t do much. Some kids have their parents on the weekends and that’s it. I’m not there a lot of the school year but then May to September I’m there the whole time. It works for us. I think it’ll probably change in the couple years, but right now it’s the only way I can really do it. They are 9 and 11. We do a lot of phone chatting, but it gets hard. I think maybe it’s harder for me than it is for them.
Who are your favorite poets? What do you look for when you read poetry?
Aracelis Grimay, Angel Nafis, Shira Erlichman, Jeremy Radin, Tara Hardy, Natalie Diaz, Sam Sax, Danez Smith and Rachel McKibbens are my most frequented alive poets and then Anne Sexton, Rumi and Hafiz are some already done that life thing poets I dig. When I read, I want to be taken out of my body a little bit and pushed into something bigger. That’s the kind of stuff I really like, people that have a wider lense than what’s going on with their personal struggle. That’s the thing you know better than anything, but if you can see the higher purpose or vibrational experience of it and communicate that, I’m super into it.
10 Queer Spoken Word Artists For You To Get Obsessed With
I fell down the rabbit hole of spoken word a few years ago and have yet to bother climbing out. It’s warm and inviting down here, like a secret cave stocked with an endless supply of brownies and mint green nail polish. Poetry gives us the power to speak truth into existence without asking for an answer in return. We may all worship at the well-spoken altar of Andrea Gibson, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t more out there to love! Here are ten LGBTQ spoken word artists you should consider crushing on (one of whom was a Straddler on the Street!):
1. Janani Balasubramanian – Trans/national
“I understand that your bodies have not always been yours,
but they have always been beautiful.
You have always had words for them.
My testosterone is now made by Israel’s largest company.
There is colonization running through my bloodstream.
Every time I take a shot, my muscles feel out of place for several days.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXFKSzNakuk
2. Denise Frohman – Dear Straight People
“Dear Queer young girl,
I see you.
You don’t want them to see you
so you change the pronouns in your love poems to him
instead of her –
I used to do that.
Dear straight people,
you make young poets make bad edits.”
3. Staceyann Chin – Speech at the Gay Games VII
“Gay
Lesbian
Bisexual
Transgender
Ally
Questioning
Two spirit
Non-gender conforming
every year we add a new fucking letter
yet every year
I become more and more afraid to say
who I am
everyday
under the pretense of unity I swallow something I should have said
about the epidemic of AIDS in Africa
or the violence against teenage girls in East New York
or the mortality rate of young boys on the south side of Chicago.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMkALDykOBs
4. Joanna Hoffman – Pride
“So when my straight friend asks me why there is no straight pride parade I tell her,
“You can’t be proud of something you’ve never had to fight for.”
This is for every wedding I watched from the sidelines,
every fairy tale with stipulations,
every it’s a choice, it’s a phase, you’re disgusting,
every swollen choke of shame I learned to coat my throat with,
every gay kid who ever believed nothing would ever make this better,
because home meant break the parts of yourself
that don’t fit into the plaster of who you’re supposed to be.”
5. Anis Gisele – Untitled
“The day she told you to never come back
you tripped, on your tin can voice.
You’ve been confused by its sound ever since.
Breathe, when you are on stage, or your body will not trust
that you won’t dissolve in the anxiety of holding up the truth.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM3W27kHZlA
6. Nicole Masangkay – My Gender is for Mothers
“When you remember that
This world was built against this gender on this body
And that the odds are against love and safety
I will trace the big dipper onto the soft canvas of your back
Watch constellations wrinkle gravity at the brimming outstretch of your smile
Catch curves folding under covers with my earthbound hands
And crumple the sky’s hemline to custom-fit your palms
When this world will not fit our safety
I will give you the universe with my fingertips
And the most gentle bends of my body”
7. T. Miller – Coming Out
“This world cares nothing about how many clocks we own.
There will never be a right time for us to be ourselves.
So when you leave home,
make sure your picture is just how you want to be remembered
in case you return as someone else or not at all.”
8. Ashley Catharine – Artists Don’t Make Mistakes
“Like this body you’ve given me hasn’t fulfilled its purpose,
Like it’s supposed to have wings
but my packaging has been tampered with.
Some days I can’t seem to choke out words
big enough to fit me because this larger size
often makes me feel so small.”
9. Kai Davis – Homicidal Rainbow
“I can’t hide behind bathroom stalls.
They always find me,
amongst black and white linoleum and piss.
I can’t forget they call me faggot, and fruit,
and Tinkerbell, but I thought that bitch had wings
and I never once felt like I could fly.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X9nRnKshCM
10. Shanita Jackson & Dakota Odur – Gay is the New Black/Civil Rights
“My legacy has been swept under rugs
No one has ever sung me a spiritual to lead me to the promised land
or made me rainbow cake to remind me of where I come from.
We are history’s middle children who have to wear glitter to get attention.
We are your siblings. We are not looking to replace you on our family tree,
we just want a hug at Christmastime.”