Age 10, a few more poems scattered about, based on the recommendation of an English teacher. Junior high and a few more written in diaries and never finished. Nothing real until freshman year, with another class project and another encouraging English teacher. None of this was exceptional or original, especially not the poetry, until I was 15 and I became, shamefully and undeniably, obsessed with a boy who told me “he would never date a redhead,” in what I now recognize was the politest way he could think to say no.

Three years full of poems followed that “no,” along with hundreds of phone calls, nights spent consoling him after an ill-fated football game (he was the kicker, and I thought that was a sign that he was special), and lies told to his friends and parents about my involvement in his life. It was not until the most volatile time in a high schooler’s life (senior prom and graduation season), that I was able to open my eyes, and yet it still took months to pry my mind away from him.

It would not be until a few months later that I met my partner, Kris, and discovered poetry was meant to be something else entirely. Writing from what can only be called “desperation,” I discovered the joy of writing from mutuality. My favorite word in this age of dating rules and self-involved designs.

For my creative writing practicum in undergrad, I wrote a chapbook called Loam: the ideal soil type for fruiting plants, which I thought was a rather funny title for a queer love letter proudly displayed on the shelf of a homophobic institution. Openly dedicated to Kris, I wrote 15 poems about the ways in which our relationship, and our sex life, resembled the garden, the gardener, and the very soil itself. And later, as the school’s literary magazine editor, I helped more thinly veiled queer and/or erotic poetry slip through the cracks and onto the page.

When I met Jerry at the AWP conference in Baltimore this past March—and walked among the hundreds of queer journals present—I realized that my poetry really does have places to grow in the light, not hidden in plant metaphors, however beautiful they might be.

The Queer Love Project, in its openness, its range, its adaptability, seemed like a beautiful—and safe—place to invite poets to grow. The first essay I read was “Why ‘Heated Rivalry’ Reheated My Own Sapphic Love Story,” demonstrating the open conversation between and within the community that I have been looking for. Bouncing from one conservative community to the next by way of my academic journey, I have been searching, too, for a queer community that does not fall into the trap of old-fashioned thought by building borders and rules around our lives.

As a woman who has written about the uncomfortability of straight women writing over and over again about queer men, I have long wondered if I am just as “bad”—especially since I still choose not to tell people that Call Me By Your Name is my favorite novel, and one of the main assists to my coming out. But in the essay, a queer woman recalls her hot-and-heavy, and deeply emotional, times with her partner after watching Heated Rivalry (which clearly has no present concerns for a sapphic plot-line) and so did I!

Jerry invited me to be the Queer Love Project’s poetry editor, and I would like to open up the new poetry section of QLP to embrace the “wrong” way of doing things, the questionable, and the confusing, and not fret over current concerns about how to “correctly” be a lesbian, or a transmasc person, or what have you.

We are not building queer lives to be stifled by rule following; we are queer because we don’t follow the rules, and we deserve to grow in our queer lives. Watching my partner transition little by little as they have discovered themselves, over the last five years, has taught me that more than anything. And fearing for their acceptance in all communities has taught the importance of true queer community.

Poetry, like a body, is not to be policed. Poetry is to question, to work through, to strive to understand or make peace with the fact that you can’t. On any given day, I will refer to myself as a lesbian, as a sapphic woman, as a queer person. And on any given day, I will write a poem about my partner’s thighs or the chunk of hair that always falls over their right eye, or about that guy, who I still wonder what it would’ve been like to have sex with. I hope others will share their poetry, no matter who or what they are writing about, as long as this writing helps them grow.

I’ve been on the other side of the submission portal for a few years, and I haven’t written in a long time, so this will be an opportunity for all of us to return to poetry. As a show of good faith, here are two of my older works to purvey. Let me know what you think in the comments. I look forward to reading your work as well. Email us at to queerloveprojectsub@gmail.com

Paris

In spite of my assumed levity,
I do not live in a soft-edged state of ignorance,
Fastened in the black between the stars and moon,
Where I believe that the river is bluer
Than the sky or that I don’t desire
The sun to function healthfully.

I know I persist in such dishonour that the gods
Detail my baseness in salons and garden parties 
And I receive from them no encouragement
To address or call on them when in town,
Where the streets signs turn inside out
To avoid my soiled gaze. 

Put not your trust in princesses,
(Whose lusts I pickpocketed with two fingers)
Who attempt redundant reconciliation
After we, running asunder, assume different devotions. 
For this life must have cost me, 
And her, 
The price of many a dead dove.

Medical Miracle

Then, you gallop but your hands have no motion
Because paralysis is a villain,
Peeling life—poor, droning mother
—ajar, ruining routine syndromes,
Calling flu to pass into truck-tripped venison.

Pain excites more cycles,
Lumps burn, noses gush,
Rank symptoms sugar your hands.

Is cerebral-choking our King’s Curse?
He names us vital—dubs us death.
Angels never do surprise 
But Vandals colonize King’s periscopes.
Killing or dying, the saints stay still.

Now, on Sundays, I tape raspberries to you,
Summoning summer renewal
As both creatinine and creator have failed us.

Is this freedom or destination?

For each monthly poetry drop, we are aiming for 5-10 poems.

We are interested in work that focuses on questions, confusion, discovery, and revelry in your queer identity, whether that be in your professional, personal, or sexual lives; celebrates growth, even if that growth is hard-won, messy, or difficult to reckon with; delves into the sexual, the erotic, the desired, the desiring, and the pleasurable; examines hurt, pain, grief, and (hopefully) the ways you can work with and through that pain; applauds and finds queer beauty, even and especially in not-so-beautiful places.

All topics are welcome as long as all animosity and hate speech are left at the submission door. If your work includes hate speech that you encountered that you feel is necessary to tell your story, we will review and discuss.

We will consider themes and parameters with time, but at present, we would simply like to see poetry that revels in its own queer glory.

Length and parameters: Send up to three poems, no more than 30 lines each.

We are welcoming poetry in all forms, but be aware that the more complicated the line breaks and original spacing, the harder it will be to replicate on a prose-based platform like Substack, though they have some poetry features.

• Format: Please share all files as PDFs. If you have artwork that accompanies pieces, please send those along as well, with clear notes and descriptions. By submitting, you recognize that all poems are subject to suggestions and edits that will be discussed and finalized with your, the poet’s, consent before publication.

• Original work and first serial rights: The Queer Love Project will have exclusive rights to the piece for two years if accepted. You can publish elsewhere as long as you link to the original piece published on QueerLoveProject.substack.com.

• Excerpts and previously published work: We do publish original work that is excerpted from chapbooks, zines, books, and anthologies and will provide pre-order links and other citations to the originals if requested.

• Do you provide edits? Yes, expect to work with an editor in a collaborative way. We often give top edits (general constructive ideas) as well as line edits and copy edits to help you get your piece in shape for publishing. We see it as a generative process, and we hope you will too! That said, send us your best draft, but don’t stop yourself from submitting if you are a new or emerging writer who still needs support. We have published many first-time writers and love doing so!

• When to expect a reply: We hope to reply within 5 days from first submission. Do not follow up before that time. We hope to offer feedback and edits for your essay. If you haven’t heard back within 7 days, please feel free to reply to your original email so that it is threaded with your original pitch email.

• Email us at queerloveprojectsub@gmail.com

• You must be a subscriber to pitch! (It’s free, so go ahead and click that button if you haven’t already.)

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We do not publish any content that was written by or with the assistance of generative AI.

Poetry can be intimidating to some readers, yet it’s often how many of us got our start writing. At some point, it becomes obscure, difficult to process and we shy away from the thing that causes confusion. Maybe it’s because it’s often non-linear, makes gorgeous leaps and invokes imagery that escapes easy explanation.

When I was in Los Angles earlier this year for the AWP conference, I met so many talented, enthusiastic poets—many of whom asked me if we would ever publish poetry at The Queer Love Project. “I don’t feel qualified to make a judgment about poetry,” I explained. “Maybe one day.”

When we made a call for submissions for short pieces of nonfiction, we received some excellent poetry, so I decided to take the leap and collect some more poetry (and yes, I even tucked one in by me that was recently published). Many of these poems touch on emotions we can relate to: desire and shame, joy and longing, pride and something close to sublime awe. Hopefully they’ll inspire you. Maybe you’ll be surprised.

A special thanks to Ty Beaver, who writes Sitting Queerly, since he gave permission to use two of his photos.

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“90s Queen, Cop”

by DW Kana Shephard
(

I don’t know if I could
Ever blow a cop
To get out of a ticket
But it was a fantasy
The uniform, the virility,
the way the hips
walk up to the window.

The sense of danger when
red and blue flash
in the rear view.

The flash light
Hitting my face,
Shadowing his, just a deep voice
And all I see is leather belt, gun.

The outline of … wow, he’s commando.
Is that standard issue?
And not only that, he’s growing as he speaks.

Brazen as makeup runs down my face
An eyelash hanging
Wig askew just outside
The Tacoma Dome
Some call it the Queen Dome
When the King Dome was still standing
That bar that’s now a car wash
and a gas station.

The 90s such a different time.

My soft, soft voice. Not scared.
Knowing I did nothing wrong.
As he hands me back my
License, pauses, taps it.
Knowing he struggling,
I take it. I smile and nod.

My inner slut
Just wants to reach
Through the window
Pull the waist over
And go to town
But even back then,

My inner slut
Had a protector
That good or bad
Keeps me from the
Pleasure of Life.
And that fantasy
Comes back some days.

“Can I go, sir?”
He lets me go with a warning.
It could’ve been a lot worse.
A whole lot of headache.
Trauma-inducing.
Problems, but I was polite then
as I would be
Now.

In this new world
I don’t want to be stopped by
A cop.
I don’t want to be in the system.
More than I am.

So now, it’s a stolen glance,
A tender moment,
A smirk,
A lick on the lips,
Perhaps, I’ll just find
My own cop, our own car
Some day.

“first time i fell in love”

By

i didn’t care about desire or where he pointed his.
if his fingers found
themselves in sea green light inside my best friend’s
pool or her bathing suit,
if he ran the soft curve of a silver fishhook across
a cheerleader’s cheek,
i needed to hear what it felt like. in detail. if his lips licked
the golden abdomen
of someone from his soccer team, i gladly fluffed
their pillows first. and when
he walked the lake shore thirty times a morning, did he
eventually see a body
rise like a vision from cool water, a nymph to stir him? if he
stirred, what was passion
like, and did he leave there laughing, or laughed at? i cared which.
i cared long enough
to show him constellation gemini when we went camping.
when i finally told him
how i felt, deep as night was, he was sleeping. i couldn’t tell
by his closed eyes
or whispery breathing, so i lifted his thin forearm by the wrist.
it fell heavy, blue in moonlight.

“a high school senior”

By

a sophomore from art class. could he paint. i kept
his scraps of craft paper
and stray eyelashes in a jewelry box my grandma bought
in italy. what he looked like
i can’t say without referencing titian. he became
a friend. no other
word for it then. romance was need, as in: oxygen,
as in: an empty vessel.
i needed him to say he knew all art materials
were the same. water,
oil, charcoal, pain. ceramic, acrylic, suffering. something i believed
stupidly. we knew
from a young age, blood turns red only when
it leaves the vein.
we never knew we were in eden with no clock. we were
all the time inventing
the place. i carved remus and romulus as wooden wolves,
i made a melancholy
owl from clay. every sculpture was me, was an imperfect thing
i needed him to see.

“Stolen Gardens”

by Jerry Portwood

The cracked husks of burnt-out houses are the
best place to find the bright live ones.
Drive down and see the swaying, heavy heads of daffodils,
little, defiant jonquils among
the crumbling windows, black ash bricks.

You point out lily of the valley, purple iris,
pink hyacinth and muscari
growing in large clumps beside melted mortar—
huddled together, forgotten.

Too poor to buy bulbs and rhizomes,
you teach me how to covet these almost-wild things;
we feel like plundering pirates
as we dig them from under the moldy pecans.
Leaning down low on the trowel
my nose crouched in buttery trumpets,
some with ruffled centers,
smelling their touch.

Flowers sweet and almost sick,
making my throat cluck and suck.
“These trees smell like cum,” you say
about the flowering pear,
and I blush, recall thick dishwasher steam—
which makes me wonder
if Mom knows that I know
the smell of sex;
its sweet breath of bleach—
as I choke and swallow shame.

But before we take the bulbs home and soak the
papery skins, rake leaves away,
stretch back the frozen red Georgia clay
to create a new plot together from stolen gardens—
we park behind the abandoned trailer
hidden a mile from home.

Your big black Pontiac hulks there,
shaking our smoky breath into patterns.
I pull down our pants, sweat through the windows
as you open me up on my stomach
remember to breathe in the pain,
dizzy from the cloying scent of daffodils beside me.
Grit my jaw and squint my eyes,
I see their happy faces limp, sacks of
long green stalks and bulbs laid bare,
and long to mingle with them;
eager and innocent with life,
turn away as you thrust and grunt
to listen as they thrive.

Originally published in Alocasia, a journal of queer, plant-based writing

“Unwitting Sirens”

By Ty Beaver (

Be at a distance
Or at least in disguise
Find water clear, green or blue
Shallow or deep
But also sun, they won’t come out without the sun
And be calm
Except for the deafening echoes in your chest
Except for the sharp voices in your head
Breathlessly encouraging
Screaming caution
Bronze and porcelain glimmering along with the ripples
They laugh and joke
Fight to keep your eyes down
To prove you don’t see them

Even when they’re sitting in front of you, oar in hand
Or laying beside you on warm pebbles
Your eyes tracing every line made by bone, muscle, tendon
You want to become entangled in them
But that would break the spell
Break the illusion you must maintain
Lest you make them hide, maybe forever
So you sing to yourself
A song they’ll never hear
So you can continue living
Unfulfilled
And see them next summer

“A word”

by Eben Bein

for 天野

I am sitting on a lozenge-shaped couch
in the waiting area of a Cartier,
wrinkling my nose at the etched perfume
and the fake-looking straight couple
on the #CartierStoriesByYou Poster,
sending you snaps of the Panthère collection
with hammy voiceovers and there is no reason I,
who have never and will never again enter a Cartier,
should be so completely myself except I know
you will say yes.

And being so sure makes me
nervous since you bought the band yourself
years ago, convinced you would never meet someone,
and just this morning handed it to me:
Engrave something. Nine characters or less.
Surprise me. And to make matters worse, I,
who have vacillated for decades on a word
knew instantly what it would be.

Yes. You’ve got me
so diamond clear, so fit to burst, so chest
full of yes compressions that when the sales associate
messes up your pronouns a third time
I just give a watery thanks and duck out
onto the street where actual people are,
and two of them, maybe a couple,
are laughing, like, with their actual bellies
at what must have been a stupid joke
and I didn’t hear a word of it but
now I’m laughing as well as crying,
so completely at yes with myself,
walking home so fast I’m almost running
because I can’t wait to tell you about it.

“A word” was first published in New Ohio Review

“The source”

by Eben Bein

for 天野

Early summer.
Under park trees
a Mourning Cloak butterfly
flickers an ellipse
over the sunlit patch of grass
where you are laid out, reading
where I am watching you read
your shoulder, your being turned
to the page. It settles beside you
like your notebook
—open, forgotten.

You are a statue with hair
a breeze runs fingers through,
still as a word
I could peer into for life.
The wind starts gently
to turn the pages of your notebook up
onto your elbow: one, two,
catching on a blank page
what will be written there
and onward. It's all unfolding
the future building against your arm.

It flutters but does not leave.
I vow to stare into the source with you—
hold it open—never look away.
Wings, thin as paper, shiver.
Stay.

“The source” was first published in Terrain.org and republished in Love is for All of Us anthology

Eben E. B. Bein’s debut chapbook, Character Flaws, poingantly explores the interplay of judging the self and others while negotiating sexuality and love.

”I Vow”

by

To wrap my arms
Around your ideas
Like sand and sky
On the shore before us.

To tend the sails
Of each adventure,
Whether ocean wide
Or a few skeins deep.

To savor our waves
Rather than tame,
So I better trace
The outlines of our oceans.

To shift my shores
In the rise and fall
Of tides and ties
So our seas still meet.

To swim through life
In devotion to our home,
Whether stranded in dunes
Or the croon of the woods.

To press the morning
Heat on Saturday
To present our swamp’s
Strongest espresso.

To rewind the wig
Ventilation video
Lord knows how many
Times for the right moment.

To feel my hands
Flip into fins
Or fumbling fingers
To find you again.

To hold this ring
As king, despite
Petty despots
Who claim theirs like write-offs.

To love you still,
Even as gavels
Or (un)natural disasters
Attempt to tremble us.

“I told her she was annoying”

by

What can I say? I was a teenager. Old enough to believe in truth, too young still to believe in kindness. She hung out annoyingly backstage every show, even though she wasn’t in the cast, ingratiating herself to the more popular girls with coffee runs. I couldn’t stand it, and I told her so. Maybe I was jealous. But when you risk a relationship, you learn what you both can live with. We became friends. At eighteen, she took me to my first gay bar to see her bestie Fairy (110 pounds, mohawk, eyeliner) dance. I had told her honestly what I thought. And she, in return, showed me something I hadn’t been able to be honest with myself about, with no comment or judgment. I will always be grateful to her for that.

“it it too early to celebrate?”

by

created collaboratively with 53 West Hollywood residents & visitors, as part of the poets Laureateship for the City of West Hollywood

the sunset strip
echoes. jacarandas bloom bright
after barren months.

our streets will symphony again
wild beyond gardens,
blaze honey disco
french horns & orange sherbet glow.

you, dear, never stopped
being a proud march, a palm
frond in ragged wind —

yes, you curled up
in last winter’s hush.
this city threads our lonely
heartbeats, a plastic oasis of skin
sweaty in starlight.

but now it’s time for
gogo boots & guitar strings,
rooftop pools & history between your lips
like a cold margarita
while the hot asphalt
dances!

west hollywood a song:
equal parts party and protest.
one sings into the other.

it’s time to line each boulevard anew
with our delicious strangeness,
to glitter every tree.

won’t you walk with me?
my glam aunts, my ferocious uncles,
my frankest friends — my chosen family,
look at all that we have lost

and all that survives.