Some Poetry for Pride
Thanks to DW Kana Shephard, Ty Beaver, Anthony DiPietro, Eben Bein, Lee Summers, and Brian Sonia-Wallace for sharing their words
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.
“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.
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I was on the phone with my BFF. I live in Portland. He’s in Tacoma … ironically where the poem … well … ok. Uh. He tells me watch out for some Sirens. I look out my window because it’s not unusual because he means some TV show.
But my heart was glad for this morning waking up to this luscious collection of heartstrings just tugging at me, helping me realize I’m not alone out there.
I think carefully how I subscribe. But I follow. But I’m a radical faerie… I’m all about words and a
Good
Siren
Song.
-Kana
Beautiful collection.