43 Lgbtq poems

conjured in a closet; seven minutes in a delusive boon deep breaths shallow, ankles stretched, entwined ribs padded with throbs, bells and trance it never ended and then it ended the spell distant, retrospect, precious the doorways, hall- ways, the fleeting pitter patters gaze up a long flight of stairs something’s still there to behold is it sorcery or charm? invoke a comely name for it recall your palms flattening my thrum, my thrum, my good judgment groped, ravaged, delirious

“So, why don’t you sleep with girls?” “I’m not really attracted to girls.” “Are you telling me you were really attracted to every man you slept with?” Conversation with a friend 1. After twenty I stopped counting, not like my friend Beverly, who sewed an embroidered satin star on her bell-bottoms for every new guy she fucked. She had them running down both legs and around the billowing hem, and was starting up the inseam when the jeans gave out in the wash. It was a boys’ game anyway, those years of our extended homage to the penis: the guitar playing the penis, drums saluting it, cock rock, Molotov cocktail, the motorcycle gripped between the thighs, and I went down, we all went down, in the old cultural disaster of idol worship—a thousand-year bender. Only this time it was the adolescent member, oiled and laved, thrust forward arcing, thin with ache, all tight flesh poked upward, claiming its own. How it came and went, penetrating but never settling down, and how often we were caused to admire it: hairless sweet warrior, raider against the State. But I have this sweet pink flower here between my legs—I put my hand down and touch it, still soft and wet, and many-folded, endlessly opening, hiding, seeking, hidden and sought, but never very much admired or even smiled on in those years, never served much less sung to. Not a garden then but a citadel, a wall to be breached, a new land claimed, but linger there? No, I would say there was an overall lack of appreciation, though breasts were well respected, slopping loose under T-shirts like little animals, and I would feel my nipples brush the cotton with pleasure, see them regarded also with pleasure. Still, sex then was a taking, like spoils of war, a victory over all those straight fucks back home, marooned in the dismal suburbs that birthed us squalling and red and watched us flee in ungrateful cars down night highways. And God knows it felt good those nights. I was ready, it was ready, to open and answer the call. And take me down and roll me over, yes, and give it to me—but why all this riding away afterward? Where was everyone going and why didn’t I get to ride along? Who knew at first nothing had changed, just wanting the thrust and tug and slam up against the headboard, I should say so, but left still wanting more, wanting to leap out of centuries’ shame and be something new, not this old consolation of women for the powerless, some kind of cosmic door prize awarded just for showing up with a dick, some proof to themselves these boys were men. “You’re good,” he said. Hell, I wasn’t taking a typing test, I was fighting to live in a dying world. I was throwing myself away, an offering to wildest space, surrender to the mind’s dissolve, the body’s electric light, nerve endings firing like exploding stars. “You’re good,” they all said: you’d think somebody was doing a survey. Girls say yes to boys who say no, and then your professor asks if you’re wearing underwear, when you meet for your conference on the poetry of Yeats. Crossing the border after midnight in a borrowed car after a visit to the after-hours doctor’s office in Sarnia. Nodding out in the back seat, pills wearing off. He was a legend among undergraduates: cheap and reliable, always on call, until a month later the headlines screamed “Abortion Doc!” when a girl died in his office and he dragged her down to the river and dumped her body in the underbrush.

To celebrate his final Pride, in June, my friend, lymphatic, thin, and in distress, managed to dress in drag. He shot the moon: outstretched, he’d used his dying to think—obsess— about the Prada pumps, their skin a snake; the heavy pantyhose, two pair; the moot but lacy underthings; the makeup, cake, to overlay his pain. I called him beaut- i-ful; he said he felt like Greta Garbo in Queen Christina(our campy interplay); I countered that he looked more like a hobo- sexual in heels. We howled. That day, we never left his Castro flat. His rhinestone glittered, and everywhere, the smell of cologne.

My heart was a dystopian berry budding in water tiger lilies claiming hocus-pocus wonder. I was broken vanity, vixen vase, victorious tête- à-tête — the Scrabble game nobody won because the tiles aspired speculums. Ocean-misaligned brook / brook-misaligned agua — where else could these gospels have dawned if not in the bellies of men hyenaing a becoming? Twerking in church, I outperformed the candles diarized in the simpleminded annexation.       Wussup, Blastoise with the veiniest homebound pika-pika aim? Wussup, Sims Chumbawamba Family Portrait Simulation? St. Sunny of the Sissies beheld the bukkake throng of mojo-coated cartilage squandered on the refurbished bunk for new cetaceans. A dazzling jeremiad shone me dead until I gridlocked the algebraic expressions of my body in question marks. These syndicated fiyahs stigmatized my herculean magma shades, but I held these walls apart, every inch of my mascara cut off apple pie. You watched me hobble home while the streets coalesced magenta. Tell Momma the holes I cover with one error swell — & there are only inadvertent landscapes to dollop with nonetheless.

Depressed because my book wasn’t nominated for a gay award, I lie on my couch watching—not listening to— the O.J. trial. Byron, who senses something’s wrong, hides under the bed until Ira comes home, carrying a bouquet of beautifully wrapped tulips. I press the mute button. “This is your prize,” he says. “Guess what they’re called.” A smile in- voluntarily overcomes my frown. “What?” “Red Parade.” “That sounds like the name of an old Barbie outfit,” I say. “That’s exactly what I told the florist. And you know what she told me?” “What?” “When she was a girl, she turned her Barbie into Cleopatra: gave her an Egyptian haircut and painted her nipples blue.” “How cool.” “Yeah, but now she thinks that her doll would be worth eight hundred dollars if she hadn’t messed it up.” Once in water, the tulips begin to unclench— ten angry fists. Their colors are fierce, like Plath’s “great African cat,” her “bowl of red blooms.” Poor Sylvia, who so desperately wanted awards, and only won them after she was dead. Byron jumps up, Ira sits down and massages my feet. “You guys.” My spirits are lifted by their tulips, kisses, licks.

Last night, I went to a gay bar with a man I love a little. After dinner, we had a drink. We sat in the far-back of the big backyard and he asked, What will we do when this place closes? I don't think it's going anywhere any time soon, I said, though the crowd was slow for a Saturday, and he said—Yes, but one day. Where will we go? He walked me the half-block home and kissed me goodnight on my stoop— properly: not too quick, close enough our stomachs pressed together in a second sort of kiss. I live next to a bar that's not a gay bar —we just call those bars, I guess— and because it is popular and because I live on a busy street, there are always people who aren't queer people on the sidewalk on weekend nights. Just people, I guess. They were there last night. As I kissed this man I was aware of them watching and of myself wondering whether or not they were just. But I didn't let myself feel scared, I kissed him exactly as I wanted to, as I would have without an audience, because I decided many years ago to refuse this fear— an act of resistance. I left the idea of hate out on the stoop and went inside, to sleep, early and drunk and happy. While I slept, a man went to a gay club with two guns and killed forty-nine people. Today in an interview, his father said he had been disturbed recently by the sight of two men kissing. What a strange power to be cursed with: for the proof of men's desire to move men to violence. What's a single kiss? I've had kisses no one has ever known about, so many kisses without consequence— but there is a place you can't outrun, whoever you are. There will be a time when. It might be a bullet, suddenly. The sound of it. Many. One man, two guns, fifty dead— Two men kissing. Last night I can't get away from, imagining it, them, the people there to dance and laugh and drink, who didn't believe they'd die, who couldn't have. How else can you have a good time? How else can you live? There must have been two men kissing for the first time last night, and for the last, and two women, too, and two people who were neither. Brown people, which cannot be a coincidence in this country which is a racist country, which is gun country. Today I'm thinking of the Bernie Boston photograph Flower Power, of the Vietnam protestor placing carnations in the rifles of the National Guard, and wishing for a gesture as queer and simple. The protester in the photo was gay, you know, he went by Hibiscus and died of AIDS, which I am also thinking about today because (the government's response to) AIDS was a hate crime. Now we have a president who names us, the big and imperfectly lettered us, and here we are getting kissed on stoops, getting married some of us, some of us getting killed. We must love one another whether or not we die. Love can't block a bullet but neither can it be shot down, and love is, for the most part, what makes us— in Orlando and in Brooklyn and in Kabul. We will be everywhere, always; there's nowhere else for us, or you, to go. Anywhere you run in this world, love will be there to greet you. Around any corner, there might be two men. Kissing.

1 Who knew it’s quite all right that I downed three gin-and-tonics (can’t fit male inside female part on fanny pack) at four o’clock the Dyke March day of NY Pride? Who knew Manhattan streets would liquefy and lurch with dames sans bras, sans hair, sans shirt in step with beer-can band led by a skirt- ed trans in green brassiere, led by the cops whose sentries are staid as posts with glasses on, lined up beside the march like S/M tops? (They seem to think Gay Pride’s this weekend’s yawn.) (Pit stop at McD’s, can’t clip pack back on.) Who knew she’d march beside me hand-in-hand and who’d expect me to remember names when Liz’s girlfriend saw us and waved “Hi. It’s . . . Anna”? (CNN shot feed, then frames.) Booze-stymied by the glare of girls and sky, how could I choose? Should I grip hand, or pray wondering: Is today today the day she’ll let me turn the key, lead her inside? 2 Okay, I’m sober now. Today is just the kind of day she talks but feels no lust. 3 Beside her isn’t bad. Fan-stirred, the air is humid and the theater is packed. An ear-cuffed thespian tries to fix the cold, our leading ladies sweat it out in back. A prim man to my right begins to sneeze. My nose is in agreement. The perfume from Queen Mother there could clear the room. This shadow play across her face is fine. Her arm’s near mine, which means exactly nothing. Hope’s hope hums on through separate listening. That skull, opaque to me as Midland’s vault, her silky crop, its pepper dabbed with salt — I chuckle at an apt sardonic line. Her suede complexion, lifts up, checks the time. 4. Les Nouvceaux from La Nouvelle Justine I don’t love her. She doesn’t love me. Neither does this waiter who may think it strange when young girls dine with staid dames twice their age on salade de Bastille and pain de Sade. I don’t like sitting by her like wet cloth. I don’t like restaurants whose queers pawn sex to the bachelor bunch who want a thrill. I don’t like dining with my, well, not-ex, both measuring the humid air for signs of sparks I see by parts will not ignite. I’d rather have a knock-down, drag-out fight that cleared the joint than watch another guy get spanked by Corset Kris, who’d like to grab a tit, not spend hip humping hairy thighs. I’d rather I were twice her age and wise. I’d spin cruel stories of past day of bliss then give my own hands covert exercise and send her home to bed without a kiss. 5. L’Addition 30 for the play and 10 for gins, 10 for two cabs and 40 for the eats, at least the metro home was freezer-cold, at least the Broadway Local still had seats at 96th, the local went express. I blistered home ten sockless humid blocks back to my solo digs for solo sex. I got this poem for my 90 bucks.

You can’t trust lesbians. You invite them to your party and they don’t come, they’re too busy tending vaginal flowers, hating football, walking their golden and chocolate labs. X gave me a poem in which she was in love with a woman and the church but the church couldn’t accept four breasts in one bed. When I asked if our coworkers knew, she dropped her head and I said nothing for years until this morning I realized no one reads poems: my secrets and hers are safe in verse. I knew she’d have enjoyed the Beaujolais and I want to meet Dianne, Mona Lisa, Betty, Alice, the name’s been changed to protect women who can’t stand in a room holding hands because you can’t trust heterosexuals to love love, however it comes. So I recorded the party for her, for them, the mic a bit away from the action to catch the feel of waves touching shore and letting go, the wash of moods across the hours of drink and yes, some grapes were thrown and I breathed the quickening revelation of a cigarette, someone said “I gave up underwear for Lent” and I hope they play the tape while making love. As if finally the world’s made happy by who they are, laughing with, not at the nipple lick clit kiss hug in bed and after, the on and on of meals and moons and bills and burning days of pretending they don’t exist. “Who’s she? Just a friend.” And oceans are merely dew upon the land.

Here we are in our doughboys and camos, our doughty frocks with drips of bitter on the sleeve, our passions revving their pulp to pittance at a gas station in the city that never peeps— and here is the city with its Martians in leather and excoriated thunderbolt- boas, its Bible-trippers, its vintage bazookas for barter not sale, its reluctance to be reluctant, its speed for hire, into which we atrophy ourselves to briefly fit— and we are never so close to the joys of oil, the grease inside which a fat becomes a fit, as we bellow magnanimously praise on the least well of those who pass, ones who are dying we salute: we are coming from the war, they are going to the war—

You made me cry in cruel stations, So I missed many trains. You married others In plausible buildings. The subsequent son Became my boss. You promised me nothing But blamed me for doubting when who wouldn’t. If  I knew how to please you — who have found Out my faults. In dreams I’m wild with guilt. Have pity Kill it. Then, when I’ve lost all hope, Kiss me again, your mouth so open — I’d give anything for one more night — That I go without thought. Don’t bite. No, Mark me. My husband already knows Exactly what owns me.