LGBTQ2IA+

CONVERSION

sam says you can’t name your book good boys without a dog

but sam doesn’t know that i am the dog

i am the ultimate mutt and i am telling him this story

at the bar called college hill tavern which looks like a front

for some operation where all the bar stools appear as if

they were staged in under ten minutes and

the girl with the...

Megan Fernandes

Men in the Gut

Scrape the inside of sleep the belly wall

tasting like yoghurt cooked broccoli

its emptiness leaving something

on the tongue. Escaping the body

that wants to quit from the inside.

It unlaces you all the tethers sliced

away. When I dream of this body ending

of opening the germ of the pain

I am on the side of the road. My...

Jason Purcell

Brother

Your wedding day was a hurricane; your bride in red was like a kiss on

on the dry prairie dirt. You actually never told me the story of how it went.

The wedding, I mean. In fact, you never told me about how you chose

a DJ, or if the flowers glistened in the sunlight. I don't think you've ever

told me about the places you would love to see, either, or the...

Arielle Twist
1994 -

AMERICA (I'M PUTTING MY QUEER SHOULDER TO THE WHEEL)

The night America took off her mask

we slept together poorly. I'd woken up early

that Tuesday, dragged myself to a gymnasium

in Jersey City to cast my vote into the void.

I came all the way out to Hampton Bays

to see her: her picking me up in that old

Mercury van, her bringing us back to her place.

As we watched the footage of...

John Elizabeth Stintzi

The Ringing Bell

I used to liken a poem to praying. Is that right? 

Not the woo and gratitude praying served by queer witches.

Childhood praying. As a girl I genuflected to the tabernacle

and insisted on sitting next to the stained glass window.

On the right kind of Sunday sun would send a slice of pink

light through the glass and down to the porcelain tile...

Amber Dawn

Tractatus

The sun gave our shoulder blades ulu-shaped burns, and the sun gives nothing to our sort

I sleep now, and furiously

Clouds excreted shadows on the shoreline, and there were no clouds

His body a train ride away, and nearby

There are organs I have never used before, and they are pale from overuse

The sand had turned to pearls in our folds, and that...

Ben Ladouceur

You can't be an NDN person in today's world

You can't be an NDN person in today's world

 

and write a nature poem. I swore to myself I would never write a nature

poem. Let's be clear, I hate nature — hate its guts

 

I say to my audience. There is something smaller I say to myself:

 

I don't hate nature at all. Places have thoughts — hills have backs that...

Tommy Pico

Northern Light

Stepping off the plane in Whitehorse

the last thing I expect to feel

is home

not quite alone

but close enough

here in this great black north.

As we drive away from the airport

Chris points out the window

That's Antoinette's, Caribbean food

if you're feeling in need of a pick-me-up.

She's from Tobago....

Jillian Christmas

Turtle Island Poem Number Fourteen

once i left turtle island and i

rejoined la and doubleU and see

to savai‘i on a hunting trip

on the fairy from upolu

la picked up a day trick

blew him during lunch

on the beach under a tree

in front of some australian girls

and an old couple from germany

who politely ignored us

while doubleU and see and...

Dan Taulapapa McMullin

niya

When the stranger bumps his shoulder into me, hard, without an ounce of concern, I can feel the fire bubbling inside of me. The heat from the concrete rising up, through my feet, reverberating like electricity about to erupt magma through every orifice of my body. Lava that will oxidize every atom and molecule of his body on contact. The city as embodied trauma. The trauma of settlement. I...

Lindsay Nixon

Someday I'll Love Ocean Vuong

Ocean, don’t be afraid.

The end of the road is so far ahead

it is already behind us.

Don’t worry. Your father is only your father

until one of you forgets. Like how the spine

won’t remember its wings

no matter how many times our knees

kiss the pavement. Ocean,

are you listening? The most beautiful part

of your...

Ocean Vuong
b. 1988

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities

To be a good

ex/current friend for R. To be one last

 

inspired way to get back at R. To be relationship

advice for L. To be advice

 

for my mother. To be a more comfortable

hospital bed for my mother. To be

 

no more hospital beds. To be, in my spare time,

America for my uncle, who wants to be China...

Chen Chen
b. 1989

Full Metal Oji-Cree

this is the transsensorium

there are indo-robo-women fighting cowboys on the frontier

& winning finally

the premodern is a foundation for the postmodern

wintermute, tessier-ashpool, armitage

theyve revived us via neuromancy

but i am the necromancer

when i tell my mother i need kin

she sends me ten

weve all...

Joshua Whitehead
b. 1989

Trillium

the animal in me

is constant.

 

thirst starts,

hunger answers.

 

sleep is uncertain,

restless limbs.

 

in the night,

I hear footsteps.

 

warnings appear,

all signs say death.

 

still I crave

cigarettes, coffee.

 

exhaustion brings...

Gwen Benaway
1987

Love is a Moontime Teaching

love is a moontime teaching

is your kookum’s crooked smile when you pick up the phone

is another word for body

body is another word for campfire smoke

campfire smoke is the smell he leaves behind in your bed sheets

after the breakup

the word for hate sex is forest

forest sometimes means hope or lonely (depends...

Billy-Ray Belcourt

Smooth Horizon of the Verb Love

1

an urban image from the eighties

when we hung out at Chez Madame Arthur

and at the back of the room

women wrapped their arms around

nights of ink and dawn

 

2

calendar of murmurs

vague caresses about the planet and its water

we could have...

Nicole Brossard
b. 1943

Five Postcards from Jericho

Dear Regret, my leaning this morning, my leather foot, want of

stone, age old, my burnished and bruised, hair lingering, hand

caked, spongy as November, my dear Relentless, my dear Aging,

...

Sina Queyras
b. 1963

A Supermarket in California

          What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

          In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

          What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night!...

Allen Ginsberg
1926-1997

A Fixed Idea

What torture lurks within a single thought

When grown too constant, and however kind,

However welcome still, the weary mind

Aches with its presence. Dull remembrance taught

Remembers on unceasingly; unsought

The old delight is with us but to find

That all recurring joy is pain refined,

Become a habit, and we struggle, caught....

Amy Lowell
1874-1925