for father and son
Jesús José Medrano went away
no more motel rooms to clean
he asked my dad to take his place
when Dad cried and looked the other way
the mortician closed the coffin on the body
Jesús José Medrano went away
He wore his best gray suit that day
hovered slowly above the family
he asked my dad to take his place
My father marched the casket to the grave
the relatives cried in the out-loud dream
Jesús José Medrano went away
My grandfather, farmworker among grapes,
measured a man tying vines in his teens
he asked my dad to take his place
Como un hombre, he would say
my father’s tears never seen
Jesús José Medrano went away
he asked my dad to take his place
From In the Cavity of Sunsets (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 2009). Copyright © 2009 by Michael Luis Medrano. Used with the permission of Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe.
Lie to yourself about this and you will
forever lie about everything.
Everybody already knows everything
so you can
lie to them. That's what they want.
But lie to yourself, what you will
lose is yourself. Then you
turn into them.
*
For each gay kid whose adolescence
was America in the forties or fifties
the primary, the crucial
scenario
forever is coming out—
or not. Or not. Or not. Or not. Or not.
*
Involuted velleities of self-erasure.
*
Quickly after my parents
died, I came out. Foundational narrative
designed to confer existence.
If I had managed to come out to my
mother, she would have blamed not
me, but herself.
The door through which you were shoved out
into the light
was self-loathing and terror.
*
Thank you, terror!
You learned early that adults' genteel
fantasies about human life
were not, for you, life. You think sex
is a knife
driven into you to teach you that.
Copyright © 2012 by Frank Bidart. Used with permission of the author.
My mother scraped the name Patricia Ann from the ruins of her discarded Delta, thinking it would offer me shield and shelter, that leering men would skulk away at the slap of it. Her hands on the hips of Alabama, she went for flat and functional, then siphoned each syllable of drama, repeatedly crushing it with her broad, practical tongue until it sounded like an instruction to God, not a name. She wanted a child of pressed head and knocking knees, a trip-up in the doubledutch swing, a starched pinafore and peppermint-in-the-sour-pickle kinda child, stiff-laced and unshakably fixed on salvation. Her Patricia Ann would never idly throat the Lord’s name or wear one of those thin, sparkled skirts that flirted with her knees. She'd be a nurse or a third-grade teacher or a postal drone, jobs requiring alarm-clock discipline and sensible shoes. My four downbeats were music enough for a vapid life of butcher-shop sawdust and fatback as cuisine, for Raid spritzed into the writhing pockets of a Murphy bed. No crinkled consonants or muted hiss would summon me. My daddy detested borders. One look at my mother’s watery belly, and he insisted, as much as he could insist with her, on the name Jimi Savannah, seeking to bless me with the blues-bathed moniker of a ball breaker, the name of a grown gal in a snug red sheath and unlaced All-Stars. He wanted to shoot muscle through whatever I was called, arm each syllable with tiny weaponry so no one would mistake me for anything other than a tricky whisperer with a switchblade in my shoe. I was bound to be all legs, a bladed debutante hooked on Lucky Strikes and sugar. When I sent up prayers, God’s boy would giggle and consider. Daddy didn’t want me to be anybody’s surefire factory, nobody’s callback or seized rhythm, so he conjured a name so odd and hot even a boy could claim it. And yes, he was prepared for the look my mother gave him when he first mouthed his choice, the look that said, That’s it, you done lost your goddamned mind. She did that thing she does where she grows two full inches with righteous, and he decided to just whisper Love you, Jimi Savannah whenever we were alone, re- and rechristening me the seed of Otis, conjuring his own religion and naming it me.
From Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah by Patricia Smith. Copyright © 2012 by Patricia Smith. Reprinted with permission of Coffee House Press.
a curve billed thrasher
is cleaning its beak on the ground—
we are closer now than ever—sitting
in shadow—I never want to scare
anyone—not really—I have a friend
who loves people who come out
suddenly—in the dark—
pleasure
is the same distance as pain from here—
that’s my skin on your sweater—both hands
stripped now—I know I am someone
to you I am entirely—practicing
Spanish on the computer—gesturing to
the neighbor instead of speaking—
to sharpen
the body is never an accident—someone
I know I am not—letters are inseparable
from loss—moving what can be still
moved—one is sweeping the mouth—
what ever isn’t skin—take it off—
Copyright © 2016 by TC Tolbert. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 6, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.
I wish you (my mother once told me—mother of my child-
hood—even though water is water-weary—what is prayer if not quiet
who has made me—what hands you become when you touch—
who laid down on whose body—whose face and whose shoulders
worth shaking—what will I not hear when I look back
at you—who is not the mother of a daughter—who is not
the mother of a man—we are right to be afraid of our bodies—wind
is carried by what is upright and still moves what has) had
(been buried deep enough in the ground to be called roots—
when will this be the world where you stop—whatever broke
into you was torn by the contact—a face wears a face it can see—
what is alive is unrecognizable—need it be—who is my mother,
mother—no one—who hasn’t killed herself by
growing into someone—I’m sorry you have) never been born
Copyright © 2018 by TC Tolbert. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 21, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.
and if
I were to say
I love you and
I do love you
and I say it
now and again
and again
would you say
parataxis
would you see
the world revolves
anew
its axis
you
From Same Life by Maureen McLane. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. Copyright © 2008 by Maureen McLane. All rights reserved.
Everything contains some
silence. Noise gets
its zest from the
small shark's-tooth-
shaped fragments
of rest angled
in it. An hour
of city holds maybe
a minute of these
remnants of a time
when silence reigned,
compact and dangerous
as a shark. Sometimes
a bit of a tail
or fin can still
be sensed in parks.
From The Niagara River © 2005 by Kay Ryan. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
They cut off our hair
& there we were
Hairless.
A photograph
In a history i skimmed
So quick
I missed
We were there
Less than elsewhere
Our hair cut
So close the scalp
Gleamed
A row of six
Pixelated moons
Blood rose
To its feet
Our hair not ours
Once separated
Like a finger
Nail
The gold
From our teeth
Our hair burned
Made upholstery
Braided for women
Down the street
There on the page
The photograph
A camp A cage
Right angles
Impossible
Sharp as a fade
Razors in drag
Black boots & blades
I pull the image up
On my screen
Thumb the six
Bare heads
Sex organs
My face
My face
I’m alive of course
Because others died
& i’ll be survived
By no one
[amen] [amen] [amen]
My gift
To this planet
Extinction
The singed end
Of a family line
Today a man sits
Beside me
At the piano & plays
A song
My name’s in it
The one about a man
Rendered powerless
By the woman
Who takes his hair
Even here
With his breath
A flatiron
I’m standing
Between twin pillars
My arms cargo
Hardly mine
When he’s done
I take him
To bed & empty
My family
Into his darkness
Apologizing
[I’m sorry]
Again & again [i’m sorry] [i’m sorry]
Though i can’t quite say
Why
Copyright © 2017 sam sax. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in Tin House, Fall 2017.
I know I’m godless when
my thirst converts water into wasps, my country a carpet
I finger for crumbs. A country
my grandmother breeds
dogs instead of daughters because only one can be called
home. I am trained to lose accents,
to keep a pregnancy
or cancel it out with another man. My tongue is
a twin, one translating
the other’s silence. Here
is my lung’s list of needs: how to hold water
like a woman & not
drown. I want men
to stop writing & become mothers. I promise this
is the last time I call my mother
to hear her voice
beside mine. I want the privilege of a history
to hand back unworn
to grow out of
my mother’s touch like a dress from
childhood. Every time
I flirt with girls, I say
I know my way around a wound. I say let’s bang
open like doors, answer to
god. I unpin from
my skin, leave it to age in my closet & swing
from the dark, a wrecking
ball gown. In the closet
urns of ashes: we cremated my grandfather
on a stovetop, stirred
every nation we tried
to bury him in was a war past calling itself
one. I stay closeted with
him, his scent echoing
in the urn, weeks-old ginger & leeks, leaks
of light where his bones halved
& healed. With small
hands, I puzzled him back together. I hid from
his shadow in closets
his feet like a chicken’s,
jellied bone & meatless. His favorite food was chicken
feet, bones shallow in the meat
When he got dementia,
he flirted with my mother he mouthed for my breasts
like an infant
We poured milk
into his eyeholes until he saw everything
neck-deep in white
the Chinese color
of mourning, bad luck, though the doctor
says everything is
genetics. I lock myself in
the smallest rooms that fit in my mind, my grandfather’s:
a house we hired back from
fire. So I’ll forever
have a mother, I become a daughter who goes by god. I urn
my ghosts, know each by a name
my own.
Copyright © 2019 by K-Ming Chang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 22, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.
Batter my heart, transgender’d god, for yours
is the only ear that hears: place fear in my heart
where faith has grown my senses dull & reassures
my blood that it will never spill. Show every part
to every stranger’s anger, surprise them with my drawers
full up of maps that lead to vacancies & chart
the distance from my pride, my core. Terror, do not depart
but nest in the hollows of my loins & keep me on all fours.
My knees, bring me to them; force my head to bow again.
Replay the murders of my kin until my mind’s made new;
let Adam’s bite obstruct my breath ’til I respire men
& press his rib against my throat until my lips turn blue.
You, O duo, O twin, whose likeness is kind: unwind my confidence
& noose it round your fist so I might know you in vivid impermanence.
From Last Psalm at Sea Level (Barrow Street, 2014). Copyright © 2014 by Meg Day. Used with the permission of the author.
//
When my partner asks me for a self-
portrait, I tell them:
Just out of high school
I worked as a statue
of liberty. I wore blue velvet
and danced along an off-
shoot of route 6. Mascot
for freedom—I advertised
a tax agency. I had come
out that year.
Passersby rolled
down their windows,
threw lit cigarettes, trash, pennies.
I have always been one for retaliation.
So I threw the torch.
\\
//
My partner and I research the back-
yard tree with purple droppings
until we discover
she’s a true princess.
Royal green blood with roots
the size of bodies.
This princess is invasive.
She garden-snakes under
our home and upheaves
what we thought we knew
of ourselves. And god,
isn’t it terrible to gender
even a tree. Isn’t it terrible
that she reminds us of what
we’ve named our bodies’
shortcomings. A flower
concaved as cunt
seems, right now, like a betrayal
we will never forgive.
But soon
\\
//
I dream that my partner leaves me
for eight years in the Coast Guard,
a kraken stings the surface
of this dark blue nightmare.
Split this dream in half and it becomes
four years and I still don’t know
how to swim. None of this is real.
But god, my partner loves the water,
enough even, for me to get in.
\\
//
When my partner turns their hands
into window blinds, they smooth
my aging forehead with this new
type of shade, they call my skin
into perfect order with their skin.
I tell my partner I will be polite
to windows
only when I like what I see
through them. They understand
that this world is hell
bent beyond repair.
But inside
one another
there is a peace.
Inside one another
neither of us remembers gender—the meaning
of her or hers. She is lost
to space. He was never
that great to begin with.
We even misplaced the meaning of girl.
If we knew where it had been left,
we still wouldn’t go get it.
\\
//
Today I am the age
of an arsenal
of letters.
Between my partner’s legs
I speak the whole
alphabet. They stop me
when I’m close
to what feels right.
At the end of the day
all we have is this ritual
of love, and that, I think,
will be enough
to live forever.
\\
Copyright © 2018 Kayleb Rae Candrilli. This poem originally appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review. Used with permission of the author.
I am taken with the hot animal
of my skin, grateful to swing my limbs
and have them move as I intend, though
my knee, though my shoulder, though something
is torn or tearing. Today, a dozen squid, dead
on the harbor beach: one mostly buried,
one with skin empty as a shell and hollow
feeling, and, though the tentacles look soft,
I do not touch them. I imagine they
were startled to find themselves in the sun.
I imagine the tide simply went out
without them. I imagine they cannot
feel the black flies charting the raised hills
of their eyes. I write my name in the sand:
Donika Kelly. I watch eighteen seagulls
skim the sandbar and lift low in the sky.
I pick up a pebble that looks like a green egg.
To the ditch lily I say I am in love.
To the Jeep parked haphazardly on the narrow
street I am in love. To the roses, white
petals rimmed brown, to the yellow lined
pavement, to the house trimmed in gold I am
in love. I shout with the rough calculus
of walking. Just let me find my way back,
let me move like a tide come in.
Copyright © 2017 by Donika Kelly. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 20, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
We could promise to elope
like my grandmother did
if a football team won
on homecoming night.
We could be good queers?
An oxymoron we never
longed for. We could
become wed-locked
as the suffix was once intended:
laiko, Common Teutonic for play,
not loc, Old English for a cave,
an enclosure. Instead
of a suit, I could wear my T-shirt
that avows, “Support Your Right
to Arm Bears!” Or we could
wed in bear suits
just as I saw people do
one summer in San Francisco
standing amid a grassy median
during rush hour.
They were so personally
anonymously political
blocking the ocean breeze
in acrylic fur.
Forget such solemnities!
I want to run through streets
shouting up to all my beloveds’ windows:
Friends! In sickness and in health
I refuse to forsake you!
on Charlotte Street, Home,
Euclid, Decatur, Union,
Straubs, Rebecca, Bennett Ave.,
38th, Woolslayer Way.
In the only wedding I was a part of
I was the flower girl
who held up the ceremony
kneeling to drop equal dividends of
petals beside every pew,
refusing to leave anyone out.
Let us speak without occasion
of relations of our choosing!
Tied intricately
as the warps and wefts
amid mats of moss,
without competing for sunlight
our hairy caps are forever
lodging in spaces
that myopic travelers can’t see.
Of such loves unwrit, at the boundary layer
between earth and air,
I feel most clear.
From In Full Velvet. Copyright © 2017 by Jenny Johnson. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Sarabande Books, www.sarabande.org.
—for Creativity and Crisis at the National Mall
queer me
shift me
transgress me
tell my students i’m gay
tell chick fil a i’m queer
tell the new york times i’m straight
tell the mail man i’m a lesbian
tell american airlines
i don’t know what my gender is
like me
liking you
like summer blockbuster armrest dates
armrest cinematic love
elbow to forearm in the dark
humor me queerly
fill me with laughter
make me high with queer gas
decompress me from centuries of spanish inquisition
& self-righteous judgment
like the blood my blood
that has mixed w/ the colonizer
& the colonized
in the extinct & instinct to love
bust memories of water & heat
& hot & breath
beating skin on skin fluttering
bruise me into vapors
bleed me into air
fly me over sub-saharan africa & asia & antarctica
explode me from the closet of my fears
graffiti me out of doubt
bend me like bamboo
propose to me
divorce me
divide me into your spirit 2 spirit half spirit
& shadow me w/ fluttering tongues
& caresses beyond head
heart chakras
fist smashing djembes
between my hesitations
haiku me into 17 bursts of blossoms & cold saki
de-ethnicize me
de-clothe me
de-gender me in brassieres
& prosthetic genitalias
burn me on a brazier
wearing a brassiere
in bitch braggadocio soprano bass
magnificat me in vespers
of hallelujah & amen
libate me in halos
heal me in halls of femmy troubadors
announcing my hiv status
or your status
i am not afraid to love you
implant dialects as if they were lilacs
in my ear
medicate me with a lick & a like
i am not afraid to love you
so demand me
reclaim me
queerify me
Copyright © 2014 by Regie Cabico. Reprinted from Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database.
To have a thought, there must be an object—
the field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick
with sunshine. There must be an object so land
a man there, solid on his feet, on solid ground, in
a field fully flooded, enough light to see him clearly,
the light on his skin and bouncing off his skin.
He’s easy to desire since there’s not much to him,
vague and smeary in his ochers, in his umbers,
burning in the open field. Forget about his insides,
his plumbing and his furnaces, put a thing in his hand
and be done with it. No one wants to know what’s
in his head. It should be enough. To make something
beautiful should be enough. It isn’t. It should be.
The smear of his head—I paint it out, I paint it in
again. I ask it what it wants. I want to be a cornerstone,
says the head. Let’s kill something. Land a man in a
landscape and he’ll try to conquer it. Make him
handsome and you’re a fascist, make him ugly and
you’re saying nothing new. The conqueror suits up
and takes the field, his horse already painted in
beneath him. What do you do with a man like that?
While you are deciding, more men ride in. The hand
sings weapon. The mind says tool. The body swerves
in the service of the mind, which is evidence of
the mind but not actual proof. More conquerors.
They swarm the field and their painted flags unfurl.
Crown yourself with leaves and stake your claim
before something smears up the paint. I turned away
from darkness to see daylight, to see what would
happen. What happened? What does a man want?
Power. The men spread, the thought extends. I paint
them out, I paint them in again. A blur of forces.
Why take more than we need? Because we can.
Deep footprint, it leaves a hole. You’d break your
heart to make it bigger, so why not crack your skull
when the mind swells. A thought bigger than your
own head. Try it. Seriously. Cover more ground.
I thought of myself as a city and I licked my lips.
I thought of myself as a nation and I wrung my hands,
I put a thing in your hand. Will you defend yourself?
From me, I mean. Let’s kill something. The mind
moves forward, the paint layers up: glop glop and
shellac. I shovel the color into our faces, I shovel our
faces into our faces. They look like me. I move them
around. I prefer to blame others, it’s easier. King me.
Copyright @ 2014 by Richard Siken. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on August 28, 2014.
It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.
It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.
At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?
Now it is almost over.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.
It does this not in forgiveness—
between you, there is nothing to forgive—
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.
Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.
It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.
Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.
—2002
Originally published in After (HarperCollins, 2006); all rights reserved. Copyright © by Jane Hirshfield. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.
“Remember.” Copyright © 1983 by Joy Harjo from She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
My skeleton,
you who once ached
with your own growing larger
are now,
each year
imperceptibly smaller,
lighter,
absorbed by your own
concentration.
When I danced,
you danced.
When you broke,
I.
And so it was lying down,
walking,
climbing the tiring stairs.
Your jaws. My bread.
Someday you,
what is left of you,
will be flensed of this marriage.
Angular wristbone's arthritis,
cracked harp of ribcage,
blunt of heel,
opened bowl of the skull,
twin platters of pelvis—
each of you will leave me behind,
at last serene.
What did I know of your days,
your nights,
I who held you all my life
inside my hands
and thought they were empty?
You who held me all my life
inside your hands
as a new mother holds
her own unblanketed child,
not thinking at all.
—2013
Copyright © 2013 by Jane Hirshfield. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on October 14, 2013.
I plucked my soul out of its secret place,
And held it to the mirror of my eye,
To see it like a star against the sky,
A twitching body quivering in space,
A spark of passion shining on my face.
And I explored it to determine why
This awful key to my infinity
Conspires to rob me of sweet joy and grace.
And if the sign may not be fully read,
If I can comprehend but not control,
I need not gloom my days with futile dread,
Because I see a part and not the whole.
Contemplating the strange, I’m comforted
By this narcotic thought: I know my soul.
This poem is in the public domain.
I fear the vast dimensions of eternity. I fear the gap between the platform and the train. I fear the onset of a murderous campaign. I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea. I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee. I fear the books will not survive the acid rain. I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane. I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be. I fear the bad decisions of a referee. I fear the only recourse is to plead insane. I fear the implications of a lawyer’s fee. I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain. I fear to read the small print of the guarantee. And what else do I fear? Let me begin again.
From Selected Poems by Ciaran Carson, published by Wake Forest University Press. Copyright © 2001 by Ciaran Carson. Reprinted with permission by Wake Forest University Press. All rights reserved.
Say tomorrow doesn’t come.
Say the moon becomes an icy pit.
Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.
Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.
Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.
Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.
Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.
Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.
Say we never get to see it: bright
future, stuck like a bum star, never
coming close, never dazzling.
Say we never meet her. Never him.
Say we spend our last moments staring
at each other, hands knotted together,
clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.
Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be
enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,
right here, feeling lucky.
Copyright © 2013 by Ada Limón. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on March 14, 2013. Browse the Poem-a-Day archive.
Admit it—
you wanted the end
with a serpentine
greed. How to negotiate
that strangling
mist, the fibrous
whisper?
To cease to exist
and to die
are two different things entirely.
But you knew this,
didn't you?
Some days you knelt on coins
in those yellow hours.
You lit a flame
to your shadow
and ate
scorpions with your naked fingers.
So touched by the sadness of hair
in a dirty sink.
The malevolent smell
of soap.
When instead of swallowing a fistful
of white pills,
you decided to shower,
the palm trees
nodded in agreement,
a choir
of crickets singing
behind your swollen eyes.
The masked bird
turned to you
with a shred of paper hanging
from its beak.
At dusk,
hair wet and fragrant,
you cupped a goat's face
and kissed
his trembling horns.
The ghost?
It fell prostrate,
passed through you
like a swift
and generous storm.
"Six Months After Contemplating Suicide" first appeared in the December 2015 issue of Poetry. Copyright © 2015 Erika L. Sánchez.
When I talk to my friends I pretend I am standing on the wings of a flying plane. I cannot be trusted to tell them how I am. Or if I am falling to earth weighing less than a dozen roses. Sometimes I dream they have broken up with their lovers and are carrying food to my house. When I open the mailbox I hear their voices like the long upward-winding curve of a train whistle passing through the tall grasses and ferns after the train has passed. I never get ahead of their shadows. I embrace them in front of moving cars. I keep them away from my miseries because to say I am miserable is to say I am like them.
Copyright© 2005 by Jason Shinder. First published in The American Poetry Review, November/December 2005. From Stupid Hope (Graywolf, 2009). Appears with permission of the Literary Estate of Jason Shinder.