Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

Adrienne Rich, U.S. poet, scholar and critic, was born on May 16, 1929, in Baltimore, MD. She
was a college student when her poems were chosen for publication. Rich's increasing
commitment to the women's movement and a lesbian/feminist aesthetic influenced much of
her work. She also wrote compelling books of nonfiction. She was called "one of the most
widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century” and was credited
with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse."

Poem II (from Twenty-one Love Poems, 1976)

I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.

Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,

you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:

our friend the poet comes into my room

where I’ve been writing for days,

drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,

and I want to show her one poem

which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,

and wake. You’ve kissed my hair

to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,

I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .

and I laugh and fall dreaming again

of the desire to show you to everyone I love,

to move openly together

in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,

which carries the feathered grass a long way down the

upbreathing air.

1
 Danez Smith is an African-American, poet, writer and
performer from St. Paul, Minnesota. They are queer, non-binary
and HIV-positive. They are the author of the poetry collections
[insert] Boy and Don't Call Us Dead: Poems, both of which have
received multiple awards. Their most recent poetry collection
Homie was published on January 21, 2020 (from Wikipedia).

1 in 2
On February 23rd, 2016, the CDC released a study estimating 1 in 2 black men who have sex with men will be
diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime.

the cells of you heard a tune you could not hear. you memorized & masqueraded, karaoked without
knowing. you went in for a routine test & they told you what you were made of:

-honey spoiled into mead

-lemon mold
-broken proofs
-traffic tickets
-unidentified shard
-a shy, red moon
-a book of antonyms
-the book of job
-a lost child unaware of its name

you knew it would come to this, but then it actually came.

//

away to the red lake

to dance in the red waves

oh sugar boys, my
choir candy, wade slow

& forever, dip a toe

& red water will crawl

toward your neck

come on, dive in

or be swallowed
the water wants

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to meet you, why
not on such a pretty

night, with the shore’s

burgundy foam

teething toward your feet

like wine out for blood

& the sky above

dark as a nigga

who once told you

you cute & don’t worry

//

he, who smelled coffee sweet & cigarillo blue

entered me, who knew better but _____.
he, who in his wake left shredded tarot,
threw back his head & spewed light from every opening
& in me, light fell on a door, & in the door
a me i didn’t know & knew, the now me
whose blood blacks & curls back like paper
near an open flame. i walked toward the door
as i walked away from the door. when i met me
in the middle, nothing grand happened.
a rumor made its way around my body.

//

if you trace the word diagnosis back enough

you’ll find destiny

trace it forward, find diaspora

is there a word for the feeling prey

feel when the teeth finally sink
after years of waiting?

plague & genocide meet on a line in my body

i cut open my leg & it screamed.

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 Denice Frohman is an award-winning poet and educator, whose
work explores the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and the “in-
betweeness” that exists in us all. She is the 2013 Women of the World Poetry
Slam Champion, 2014 CantoMundo Fellow, 2013 Hispanic Choice Award,
and 2012 Leeway Transformation Award recipient. Her work has appeared in
the Huffington Post and the forthcoming book, Jotas: An Anthology of Queer
Latina Voices. Her poem spoken word poem “Dear Straight People” went
viral with over 1.5 million YouTube views. She has performed and taught
poetry across the country and is part of the spoken word duo, Sister Outsider.

Dear Straight People (2013)

Dear Straight People,

Who do you think you are?

Do you have to make it so obvious that I make you uncomfortable?
Why do I make you uncomfortable?
Do you know that makes me uncomfortable?
Now we’re both uncomfortable.
Dear Straight People,
You’re the reason we stay in the closet.
You’re the reason we even have a closet.
I don’t like closets, but you made the living room an unshared space
and now I’m feeling like a guest in my own house.
Dear Straight People,
Sexuality and gender? Two different things combined in many different ways.
If you mismatch your socks, you understand.
Dear Hip-Hop,
Why are you fascinated with discovering gay rappers?
Gay people rap. Just like gay people ride bikes and eat tofu.
Dear Straight People,
I don’t think God has a sexual orientation, but if she were straight, she’d be a dope ally.
Why else would she invent rainbows?
Dear Straight Women,
I mean, “Straight Women.”
Leave me the fuck alone!

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Dear Straight Men,
If I’m flirting with you it’s because I think it’s funny. Just laugh.
Dear Straight People,
I’m tired of proving that my love is authentic. So I’m calling for reparations.
When did you realize you were straight? Who taught you?
Did it happen because your parents are divorced?
Did it happen because your parents are not divorced?
Did it happen because you sniffed too much glue in 5th grade?
Dear Straight People,
Why do you have to stare at me when I’m holding
my girlfriend’s hand like I’m about to rob you?
Dear Straight People,
You make me want to fuckin’ rob you!
Dear Straight Allies,
thank you, more please!
Dear Straight Bullies,
You’re right. We don’t have the same values.
You kill everything that’s different.
I preserve it.
Tell me, what happened to
Jorge Mercado?
Sakia Gunn?
Lawrence King?
What happened to the souls alienated in between too many high school walls,
who planned the angels of their deaths in math class,
who imagined their funerals as ticker-tape parades,
who thought the afterlife was more like an after party.
Did you notice that hate is alive and well in too many lunch rooms,
taught in the silence of too many teachers,
passed down like second hand clothing from too many parents.
Dear Queer Young Girl,
I see you.
You don’t want them to see you

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so you change the pronouns in your love poems to “him” instead of “her.”
I used to do that.
Dear Straight People,
You make young poets make bad edits.
Dear Straight People,
Kissing my girlfriend in public without looking to see who’s around
is a luxury I do not fully have yet.
But tonight, I am drunk in my freedom,
grab her hand on the busiest street in Philadelphia,
zip my fingers into hers and press our lips firmly,
until we melt their stares into a standing ovation, imagine
that we are in a sea of smiling faces,
even when we’re not
and when we’re not,
we start shoveling,
digging deep into each other’s eyes we say,
“Hey Baby, can’t nothing stop this tonight”
because tonight, this world is broken
and we’re the only thing
that’s going to keep it together.

Commentary
Denice Frohman's "Dear Straight People" is an open letter to heteronormative society. Her poem calls out straight
people for creating a climate full of micro and macro aggressions that queer people have to navigate around. She
addresses straight people with a patient temperance, trying to communicate to them what it feels like to be
scrutinized for being exactly who you are and trying to show them scenarios in which their straight privilege causes
harm to the queer community. A lot of the things that normal men and women do, like public displays of affection,
can be really dangerous for queer folk. There is a liberation in shrugging off the risk of being taunted or harassed,
which is highlighted in the poem. What can be taken away form this poem is the idea that love and authenticity is
worth more than the cost of assimilating to society's preferences. Times are changing and though kissing her partner
in public may still be a radical act of feminism, there is optimism in the word "yet," for we believe that poetry can
change the minds of millions.
(From https://www.powerpoetry.org/actions/top-feminist-slam-poems).

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 Lee Mokobe is an award-winning slam poet and the founder of
Vocal Revolutionaries, a volunteer-run literary organization focused on
empowering African youth. Lee is also an LGBTQ activist specifically
referencing their experience as a black transgender immigrant in South
Africa and America. He is a teaching artist across the United States and a
2015 TED Fellow.
“As a performing artist, it is my duty and passion to be able to document life
experiences and speak up against injustices. As a slam poet, who explores social
injustice and gender identity issues, I am dedicated to shedding light and
inspiring change through my art forms”.

What it Feels Like to Be Transgender (2015)

The first time I uttered a prayer was in a glass-stained cathedral.
I was kneeling long after the congregation was on its feet,
dip both hands into holy water,
trace the trinity across my chest,
my tiny body drooping like a question mark
all over the wooden pew.
I asked Jesus to fix me,
and when he did not answer
I befriended silence in the hopes that my sin would burn
and salve my mouth would dissolve like sugar on tongue,
but shame lingered as an aftertaste.
And in an attempt to reintroduce me to sanctity,
my mother told me of the miracle I was,
said I could grow up to be anything I want.
I decided to be a boy.
It was cute.
I had snapback, toothless grin,
used skinned knees as street cred,
played hide and seek with what was left of my goal.
I was it.
The winner to a game the other kids couldn’t play,
I was the mystery of an anatomy,
a question asked but not answered,
tightroping between awkward boy and apologetic girl,
and when I turned 12, the boy phase wasn’t deemed cute anymore.
It was met with nostalgic aunts who missed seeing my knees in the shadow of skirts,
who reminded me that my kind of attitude would never bring a husband home,
that I exist for heterosexual marriage and child-bearing.
And I swallowed their insults along with their slurs.
Naturally, I did not come out of the closet.
The kids at my school opened it without my permission.
Called me by a name I did not recognize,
said “lesbian,”
but I was more boy than girl, more Ken than Barbie.

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It had nothing to do with hating my body,
I just love it enough to let it go,
I treat it like a house,
and when your house is falling apart,
you do not evacuate,
you make it comfortable enough to house all your insides,
you make it pretty enough to invite guests over,
you make the floorboards strong enough to stand on.
My mother fears I have named myself after fading things.
As she counts the echoes left behind by Mya Hall, Leelah Alcorn, Blake Brockington.
She fears that I’ll die without a whisper,
that I’ll turn into “what a shame” conversations at the bus stop.
She claims I have turned myself into a mausoleum,
that I am a walking casket,
news headlines have turned my identity into a spectacle,
Bruce Jenner on everyone’s lips while the brutality of living in this body
becomes an asterisk at the bottom of equality pages.
No one ever thinks of us as human
because we are more ghost than flesh,
because people fear that my gender expression is a trick,
that it exists to be perverse,
that it ensnares them without their consent,
that my body is a feast for their eyes and hands
and once they have fed off my queer,
they’ll regurgitate all the parts they did not like.
They’ll put me back into the closet, hang me with all the other skeletons.
I will be the best attraction.
Can you see how easy it is to talk people into coffins,
to misspell their names on gravestones.
And people still wonder why there are boys rotting,
they go away in high school hallways
they are afraid of becoming another hashtag in a second
afraid of classroom discussions becoming like judgment day
and now oncoming traffic is embracing more transgender children than parents.
I wonder how long it will be
before the trans suicide notes start to feel redundant,
before we realize that our bodies become lessons about sin
way before we learn how to love them.
Like God didn’t save all this breath and mercy,
like my blood is not the wine that washed over Jesus’ feet.
My prayers are now getting stuck in my throat.
Maybe I am finally fixed,
maybe I just don’t care,
maybe God finally listened to my prayers.

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 TIMOTHY LIU (1965)
The son of Chinese immigrants, poet Timothy Liu was born in San Jose, California. He
earned a BA at Brigham Young University and an MA at the University of Houston. Paying
attention to formal constraints such as syllabics, Liu’s poetry explores identity, violence,
sexuality, and the power of witness. In interviews Liu has addressed the role of explicit
sexual or violent imagery in his poetry, stating, “Language is erotic, intended or not. Some
of the poems … toy with cultural taboos as well, and therefore are obscene, that is ‘offstage.’
… Many of my poems seek to stage linguistic tropes and situations that have been largely
left out of poetic discourse, thus releasing textual energies that our culture seeks to
suppress.”

Winter
How long will the bed that we made together
hold us there? Your stubbled cheeks grazed my skin
from evening to dawn, a cloud of scattered
particles now, islands of shaving foam
slowly spiraling down the drain, blood drops
stippling the water pink as I kiss
the back of your neck, our faces framed inside
a medicine cabinet mirror. The blade
of your hand carves a portal out of steam,
the two of us like boys behind frosted glass
who wave goodbye while a car shoves off
into winter. All that went unnoticed
till now — empty cups of coffee stacked up
in the sink, the neighborhood kids
up to their necks in mounds of autumn leaves.
How months on a kitchen calendar drop
like frozen flies, the flu season at its peak
followed by a train of magic-markered
xxx’s — nights we’d spend apart. Death must work
that way, a string of long distance calls
that only gets through to the sound of your voice
on our machine, my heart’s mute confession
screened out. How long before we turn away
from flowers altogether, your blind hand
reaching past our bedridden shoulders
to hit that digital alarm at delayed
intervals — till you shut it off completely.

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 Justice Ameer is a Black trans poet based in Providence, Rhode
Island. Xe (pronounced like “zee) is a Pink Door fellow and an inaugural
Feminine Empowerment Movement (FEM) Slam co-champion.

body without the “d”

the bo’y wakes up
the bo’y looks at itself
the bo’y notices something missing
there is both too much and not enough flesh on the bo’y

the bo’y is covered in hair

what a hairy bo’y
some makes it look more like a bo’y
some makes it look more like a monster

the bo’y did not learn to shave from its father

so it taught itself how to graze its skin and cut things off
the bo’y cuts itself by accident
the blood reminds the bo’y it is a bo’y
reminds the bo’y how a bo’y bleeds
reminds the bo’y that not every bo’y bleeds

the bo’y talks to a girl about bleeding

she explains how this bo’y works
this bo’y is different from hers
bo’y has too much and not enough flesh to be her
the biology of a bo’y is just
bo’y will only ever be a bo’y

the bo’y is Black

so the bo’y is and will only ever be a bo’y
the bo’y couldn’t be a man if it tried
the bo’y tried

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the bo’y feels empty
the bo’y feels like it will only ever be empty
the bo’y feels that it will never hold the weight of another bo’y inside of it
no matter how many ds fit inside the bo’y

the bo’y is a hollow facade

it attempts a convincing veneer
bo’y dresses — what hips on the bo’y
bo’y paints its face — what lips on the bo’y
bo’y adorns itself with labels written for lovelier frames
what a beautiful bo’y
still a bo’y
but a fierce bo’y now
a royal bo’y now
a bo’y worthy of being called queen
what a dazzling ruse
to turn a bo’y into a lie everyone loves to look at

the bo’y looks at itself

the bo’y sees all the gawking at its gloss
the bo’y hears all the masses asking for its missing
the bo’y offers all of its letters
— ‘ b ’ for the birth
— ‘ o ’ for the operation
— ‘ y ’ for the lack left in its genes
what this bo’y would abandon
for the risk of being real

the bo’y is real

enough and too much
existing as its own erasure
— what an elusive d —
evading removal
avoiding recognition
leaving just a bo’y

that is never lost

but can’t be found.
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