after George Abraham
My mouth is all wrong answers. I know what happens if
I speak & vanish the question marks on every slur.
I dream his lips against mine. Chapped. Red as an exit.
▼
I speak & vanish the question marks on every slur.
I dream his lips against mine, chapped red as an exit.
He still calls himself straight even after we fuck.
▼
I dream his lips against mine, chapped-red. As an exit
he still calls himself straight even after we fuck
& I vanish in his bed. Years later, I’ll prove him right.
▼
He still calls himself straight. After we fuck
in his bed—I vanish. Years later, I prove him right.
Unfaggot his past. The first girl to redden his sheets.
▼
I vanish in his bed. Years later, I’ll prove him right—
unfaggot his past. The first girl, I redden his sheets,
still, he calls me boy & my half-buried name.
▼
His unfaggoted past—the first girl to redden his sheets.
Still, he calls me boy & my half-buried name;
my body, always center stage. The subject of debate.
▼
Still, he calls me boy & half-buried. My name,
my body, always center stage, the subject of debate;
this is not a metaphor—though I wish it was.
▼
My body is always center stage, the subject of debate.
This is not a metaphor, though I wish it was:
the wedding band; that night; thin bruise of gold.
▼
This is not a metaphor, though I wish it was:
the wedding band—a night-thin bruise of gold
a promise we know we can’t keep making.
▼
The wedding band—a night-thin bruise of gold
promise. We know we can’t keep making
brides of each other nightly & divorcing in the sun.
▼
A promise: we know we can’t keep making
brides of each other nightly & divorcing in the sun,
we all know the score, one of these boys must die.
▼
Brides to each other nightly, divorced in the sun—
we know the score. One of these boys must die.
No one in this poem would even recognize my face.
Originally published in Ninth Letter. Copyright © 2021 by torrin a. greathouse. Used with the permission of the author.
A boy can wear a dress
by cliff or by
creek, by God or by
dark in the caul of the devil.
A boy can wear a dress
bought with a tin-
can full of cherries on the
day of his daddy’s dying.
A boy can weep in his dress—
by boat or by plane, he
can sleep in his dress,
dance in his dress, make
eyes in his dress at the
flame at the hotel bar.
Goddamn it all to graceland,
how stunning he looks
in his blue cotton dress,
just stunning! Nothing can
keep him from
losing our minds, sluicing
my heart in that way he does.
Nothing can keep him.
On the walk to his daddy’s wake,
persons of rank may
question his dress,
raise their brows at his dress,
so he twirls and twirls
till his dress is its own
unaddressed question, un-
veiling the reasons he
wakes every morning, like an
x-ray for colors beneath
your colors, your
zygote soul, your naked twirl—
Copyright © 2018 by John Bosworth. Used with the permission of the author.
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.
Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.
Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
This poem is in the public domain.
Bright Girl Sally
Mulatto Sally
Well Dressed Sally
Sally With the Pretty Hair
Sally With the Irish Cotton Dress
Sally With the Smallpox Vaccine
Sally, Smelling of Clean White Soap
Sally Never Farmed A Day In Her Life
Available Sally
Nursemaid Sally
Sally, Filled with Milk
Sally Gone to Paris with Master’s Daughter
Sally in the Chamber with the President
Sally in the Chamber with the President’s Brother
Illiterate Sally
Capable Sally
Unmarried Sally
Sally, Mother of Madison, Harriet, Beverly, Eston
Sally, Mother of Eston Who Changed His Name
Sally, Mother of Eston Hemings Jefferson
Eston, Who Made Cabinets
Eston, Who Made Music
Eston, Who Moved to Wisconsin
Eston, Whose Children Were Jeffersons
Eston, Who Died A White Man
Grandmother Sally of the White Hemingses
Infamous Sally
Silent Sally
Sally, Kept at Monticello Until Jefferson’s Death
Sally, Whose Children Were Freed Without Her
Copyright © 2016 by Ashley M. Jones. From Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press, 2016). Used with permission of the author.
My love has hair
Like midnight,
But midnight fades to dawn.
My love has eyes
Like starlight,
But starlight fades in morn.
My love has a voice
Like dew-fall,
But dew-fall dies at a breath.
My love has love
Like life’s all,
But life’s all fades in death.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on June 18, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
When I rise up above the earth,
And look down on the things that fetter me,
I beat my wings upon the air,
Or tranquil lie,
Surge after surge of potent strength
Like incense comes to me
When I rise up above the earth
And look down upon the things that fetter me.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on February 10, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
Yet I was, in peculiar truth, a very lucky boy.
—James Baldwin
In any case, the story begins
with darkness. A classroom.
A broom closet. A bowl of bruised
light held over a city. Or, the story
begins with a child playing
the role of an ashy plum—
how it rises to meet the man's teeth
or doesn't. How the skin is broken
or breaks because the body just wants
what it wants: to be a hallway
where men hang their photos
on the wall. Does that make sense?
To want to own the image of the man
but not the man? To bask in that memory
of what first nailed you to the dark?
From Sympathetic Little Monster (Ricochet Editions, 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Cameron Awkward-Rich. Used with permission of the author.