43 Lgbtq poems

Despite all their fervor     they were headed somewhere   limp   in the intellect     nursery rhyme dialect headed   somewhere   all   circumference     hunnid   something for Sumerian   tablet happy meals   where you get     to munch   the   code-cold   sun upfront     the rest   when you’ve     eaten a bit of rat flesh   in the shape of yesterday     perishing youth addiction : Future dreams of codeine nibbles the white nipple wedged between him and his     soul   stice staaay sis what is this?     passes out     on the battlefield, improviser  /    wisest man I ever   mumbled   alongside     Power   with all the wars   in it ain’t shit     in   a   flawed   system     besides   self-destruction   may all our enemies   become powerful   and empty   in the west   while we sell our bodies   these   mumbled   prayers codeine   ain’t got nothin to   do     with my   love, child   either labor in the holds was painless bled ’til the chains lost their grip and there are   tapes   to prove it

Spandex leggings authenticating my anaerobic exit strategies. Crotch but a bumper sticker in a heretofore-fleeting waterloo. Crunk repentance. I span our doomed alphabet soup like Jane Fonda’s antiwar legs in calisthenic videos. My zenith of hair a brown, wannabe-Fawcett, mean-ole-toucan pupic papa — . He who so feeds on an entire corpus and still starves, helms the colloquium outside the bathroom of transubstantiation. Tonight — a vastly archived Nietzschean nighttime — I anal bleach my humpty- dumpty stigmatas. Boys conch with crimson Hollywood carpets that disentangle from their cavities, accustoming their catwalks upon the blood clots of their mamacitas. As twilight uncrowns the shade, I howl effluvium, switchblade hue to hue. I plié before the gas cloud lifting jumbo leaves. Like a mythic infantry, the thirsty roaches begin to leatherflock.

Jewelry boom box spittin’bidi bidi bom bom he verges his groove of slapstick smoke across our donated mosquito nets bidi bidi bom bom all night he fingertips our omnivorous junk in his cruel maw of tooth gaps magical realistic funky ass choral arrangements of servitude mighty dump truck hip-ee hip-ee dales my rotunda all over these unsullied shimmies bidi bidi bom bom orb-spider thighs cloaking his genocidal hunches Momma catapulting protection abracadabras over our twiggy panoplies we painstakingly bedecked how many times haven’t we fallen for mishandled precipices in the wrongheaded entirety of machomanic evacuation asteroid in mouth-crooked chaps guayabera deep pink guava pulp rum & coke in his fierce prayerful grip to bypass civility a Google-translated wink inumbrated eyebrows to cast embered mercies I pump bidi bidi bom bom hormonal harmonies for his jawlined mitzvahs bidi bidi bidi bidi bidi on wings only light will kerfuffle flight born at his bidding va-voomed for his favor we puff from the tail of his pickup truck we clothes- line an underwater continent marooned & whiplashed for genesis if carnage can charade competency we too can corrupt castanets timbre compulsory penances over his padded knees bidi bidi bom bom above his life insurance policy rates coma with anointed vanity with the right song a stone will pass for bread break for a fool’s sunrise achieve the love ritual cut scorn’s willy bob hither to this bomb

I forgot how lush and electrified it was with you. The shaggy fragrant zaps continually passing back and forth, my fingertip to your clavicle, or your wrist rubbing mine to share gardenia oil. We so purred like dragonflies we kept the mosquitoes away and the conversation was heavy, mother-lacerated childhoods and the sad way we'd both been both ignored and touched badly. Knowing that being fierce and proud and out and loud was just a bright new way to be needy.Please listen to me, oh what a buzz!you're the only one I can tell. Even with no secret, I could come close to your ear with my mouth and that was ecstasy, too. We barely touched each other, we didn't have to speak. The love we made leapt to life like a cat in the space between us (if there ever was space between us), and looked back at us through fog. Sure, this was San Francisco, it was often hard to see. But fog always burned off, too, so we watched this creature to see if it knew what it was doing. It didn't.

The night we got bashed we told Rusty how they drove up, yelled QUEER, threw a hot dog, sped off. Rusty:Now, is that gaybashing? Or are they just calling you queer? Good point. Josey pitied the fools: who buys a perfectly good pack of wieners and drives around San Francisco chucking them at gays? And who speeds off? Missing the point, the pleasure of the bash? Dear bashers, you should have seen the hot dog hit my neck, the scarf Josey sewed from antique silk kimonos:so gay. You missed laughing at us, us confused, your raw hot dog on the ground. Josey and Rusty and Bob make fun of the gaybashers, and I wash my scarf in the sink. I use Woolite. We worry about insurance, interest rates. Not hot dogs thrown from F-150s, homophobic freaks. After the bashing, we used the ATM in the sex shop next to Annie's Social Club, smiled at the kind owner, his handlebar mustache. Astrud Gilberto sang tall and tan and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema... and the dildos gleamed from the walls, a hundred cheerful colors. In San Francisco it rains hot dogs, pity-the-fool. Ass-sized penguins, cock after cock in azure acrylic, butterscotch glass, anyone's flesh-tone, chrome.

and yet we think that song outlasts us all: wrecked devotion the wept face of desire, a kind of   savage caring that reseeds itself and grows in clusters oh, you who are young, consider how quickly the body deranges itself how time, the cruel banker, forecloses us to snowdrifts white as god’s own ribs what else but to linger in the slight shade of those sapling branches yearning for that vernal beau.   for don’t birds covet the seeds of the honey locust and doesn’t the ewe have a nose for wet filaree and slender oats foraged in the meadow kit foxes crave the blacktailed hare: how this longing grabs me by the nape guess I figured to be done with desire, if   I could write it out dispense with any evidence, the way one burns a pile of   twigs and brush what was his name? I’d ask myself, that guy with the sideburns and charming smile the one I hoped that, as from a sip of   hemlock, I’d expire with him on my tongue silly poet, silly man: thought I could master nature like a misguided preacher as if   banishing love is a fix.   as if the stars go out when we shut our sleepy eyes For Haines Eason

Yael picks at their cuticles. When they speak to themself, they speak out loud. They speak to themself this morning.I think, they say,that I am coming down with wisteria. Their nail beds a bit purplish. There’s a Caesar cipher decoder ring in their shredded wheat and, unsure of what to decode first, Yael hides it under their pillow. Yael says,Today I’ll be lonely. They need the practice. Yael never drinks their cereal milk, pours it back into the jug. But they are thirsty. Outside of their tent, the lawn is still entirely a lawn — the neighbors kept to themselves last night, trampled none of the daffodils. A good omen. Today Yael can leave their tent without fear. Of what? The omen has no answer, it presents only the bright of things. Yael shoves three empty bottles into their bag and heads toward the river. • The pigs are having a swim and pay Yael no mind as they submerge each bottle. Yael imagines the bubbles that shimmy out are the 
bottle’s breath, that they have the power to take breath from anyone. The hair on their arms turns golden. Then the water. Then the pigs flee. Yael looks down as Sun approaches. They were already kneeling. 
Their shins disrupting the path of an ant colony’s leaf-carrying 
ceremony. The ants do not bite Yael — Sun is watching, and the ants like being alive, love to feel the weight of a veiny leaf, love even more the sound their mandibles make piercing through that leaf. Sun kicks a flowering fennel as He walks toward Yael, but forgets to change the wind’s direction. The seeds blow into Yael’s hair and up their nose. Though Yael did not see Him do it, Sun gives himself away by whining,It’s not my fault. • Sun’s whine reminds Yael of their husband, Heber. Heber whines like that when Yael wants to leave his tent. When Yael doesn’t invite him into their tent. When Yael doesn’t want to watch a movie that Heber has seen a dozen times. It’s exhausting to be shown things, to try to enjoy a movie while also giving a convincing performance of that enjoyment. Heber ruins these screenings — he weeps before the scenes that call for weeping. He mouths each pivotal line. So far, Yael has spent their life absorbing men’s favorites. On the rare occasion that Heber does ask to watch their favorite movie, Yael can’t remember having one. This makes Yael feel a creaking, hollow-boned kind of gloom. This gloom opens the flaps in their brain that make them want to lie in bed all day. Yael does not know the sound of their loudest yell. All their noises 
have been practiced. Maybe this is why Sun’s whine makes their cheeks flush. The sound is a selfish one. Why should it go unpunished? • Sometimes, when they think of Heber away at war, Yael grows giddy, 
presses their smile hard into their pillow until the whirling joy 
subsides. But what is the mainspring of that giddiness? They try to dissect the thought: Heber = Giddy Or Heber away = Giddy Or Heber away at war = Giddy • If Yael were to look up from the dirt, they’d see the kestrels circling above, their left talons leashed to Sun’s wrist by neon green fishing line. Taut line. No give. Yael won’t look up. Sun exhales and lets loose His belly. It peeks out from under His shirt.You can keep thinking of me as Sun. He’s relieved Yael is alone.I’ve been looking for a new name. His old name felt stale. Dead by comparison.Sun is perfect. I have a very important job for you, Yael, descendant of— He’d left His notes at home —Yael. Enlist in my war against the wicked and blessed shall you be above all people in the tent. Sun doesn’t mention that Yael isn’t His first, or even His second, choice.

1 When I spoke the words I am gay I had let them fester like blood on a prison cell wall. I hadn’t known that they would free themselves. They scaled the swollen gutter of my throat, and shot themselves right through Uncle Andy’s diaphragm, holding the air in lungs hostage so he had no words left of his own. He could only unfurl his vinegar lips to sputter silent thank you s across my brow. I kissed the darkness three times, because it stole those three merciless words from me before my Mother could. She told me that I would never survive a New York winter: Mother, painted face and gossamer cheeks. It wasn’t you walking down the hall to Economics, when you heard a familiar voice, a voice that told jokes you always laughed at in class, and he said:I can tolerate faggots, but if they flirt with me, I wouldn’t hesitate to beat them down.

Liar, I thought, kneeling with the others, how can He love me and hate what I am? The dome of St. Peter's shone yellowish gold, like butter and eggs.My God, I prayed anyhow, as if made in the image and likeness of Him. Nearby, a handsome priest looked at me like a stone; I looked back, not desiring to go it alone. The college of cardinals wore punitive red. The white spine waved to me from his white throne. Being in a place not my own, much less myself, I climbed out, a beast in a crib. Somewhere a terrorist rolled a cigarette. Reason, not faith, would change him.

But these, thy lovers are not dead.…They will rise up and hear your voice. . .. and run to kiss your mouth. –The Sphinx In the garden of Père Lachaise, city of the dead, we passed angels covering their faces in shame, & nineteenth-century trees, with tops bowed as if their only purpose was to grieve, & crossed the Transversales to Wilde’s grave. When lovers leave, they leave their kisses glistening on the gray slab, on impressions of lips themselves, a tissue of strangers’ cells the conservators cannot leave alone, & scrub the graffiti, as the plaque decrees by law, no one can deface this tomb, & still the images of lips remain, dark gray stains of animal fat imprisoned in limestone. Lips are pressed as high as lovers climb, against the Sphinx’s ridiculous headdress, on the carved trumpet of fame, & on the cheeks of its voracious face of mindless passion flying with eyes pinched tight, that some farsighted lover tried to open with lines from a red pen, like a blepharoplasty, while others kissed its sybaritic mouth to make a poem a prophecy. So here is love alive surviving the wreckage it survives, a lipstick envelope of hearts on their flight to some other place, less aware, more receiving, a final Champ de Grâce.