Hi. This blog will no longer be maintained. I have made a cohost page for poetry and perhaps other literary things, but I haven't posted anything yet. If I post anywhere else, I will put it here. Enjoy poetry and love the queer people around you.
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Cosimo Galluzzi
styofa doing anything
almost home
Peter Solarz

★
Xuebing Du
RMH
YOU ARE THE REASON
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Sade Olutola

ellievsbear
Not today Justin

Andulka
🪼

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

Product Placement
d e v o n

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@frompoemsthativeread
Hi. This blog will no longer be maintained. I have made a cohost page for poetry and perhaps other literary things, but I haven't posted anything yet. If I post anywhere else, I will put it here. Enjoy poetry and love the queer people around you.
Grief is a nation of everyone, a country without borders.
-- Eric Gamalinda, from DMZ. Amigo Warfare (2007).
Amen Amen Amen. I call out God's good name in the midst of the first miracle--the black body. Look at him, at us. Were the mountains not named after some dark brotha's shoulderes? Didn't the wind learn its ways from watching two boys run the spine of a field? Bless the birch-colored body, always threatening to grow or burn. Bless the body that strikes fear in pale police. & wets the mouths of church girls & choir boys with want. Am I allowed to say I praised my pastor most without the robe?
-- Danez Smith, On Grace. From Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color (2018).
Today, the average high school student has the same anxiety levels as the average 1950s psychiatric patient. We know the Pythagorean theorem by heart, but short-circuit when anyone asks us, How are you? We don’t know. We don’t know. That wasn’t on the study guide.
We usually know the answer, but rarely know ourselves.
-- Blythe Baird, High School. From If My Body Could Speak (2019).
They say if you want to live, “most of your life will be waiting." At the door, like a dog.
-- Hua Xi, from Waiting. In The Margins.
For a poet who has a line of poetry engraved on his body, how strong must the wind be in order to purge it?
-Chen Can (陈灿), 多大一阵风才能刮走这一行诗 (How Strong Must the Wind Be to Purge this Line). From 21st Century Chinese Poetry. Tr. Meifu Wang and Guy Hibbert
I want this winter
inside my lungs. Inside my brain & dream.
- Chen Chen, Song of the Anti-Sisyphus. From When I Grow up I Want to Be a Further List of Possibilities (2017).
That’s the way the world works.
We forget each other.
Not all at once. But in
Short stretches. Fits and starts.
- Chris Blexrud, Trippin’. From Impostor: Geography. Vol. 2(2), July 2022.
I use my body to find love. I eat all the
wrong foods. I believe what I see
with my own two eyes. Fear
eats me. I have to look
for a job. I can sprint
faster than sound.
I burn forever,
I have no
end.
- Eric Gamalinda, abell2218. From amigo warfare: poems.
My favorite part
of drinking tea is forgetting
I ever made it.
- Chen Chen, Quintessence: the Quotidian. From wildness #30 (August 2022).
You keep your scissors in the knife drawer.
I keep mine with the string and tape.
- Sarah Kay, Scissors. From No Matter the Wreckage (2014).
It’s not that I didn’t love you before
it is just – there are some things which cannot be said
and some feelings which, if articulated too early
and forced towards the surface go blind
& it’s better to hold them off, or wait them out
& never say their name aloud until the pressure of what is unspoken
becomes impossible to hold back
and articulates itself within the body
like mice, running wild through a field of burning grass.
- Hera Lindsay Bird, I Knew I Loved You When You Showed Me Your Minecraft World.
It’s not that I didn’t love you before
it is just – there are some things which cannot be said
and some feelings which, if articulated too early
and forced towards the surface go blind
& it’s better to hold them off, or wait them out
& never say their name aloud until the pressure of what is unspoken
becomes impossible to hold back
and articulates itself within the body
like mice, running wild through a field of burning grass.
- Hera Lindsay Bird, I Knew I Loved You When You Showed Me Your Minecraft World.
And there’s nothing to do but see
The sun go down into the ground
That cradles us as any coffin can.
- Jericho Brown, Another Elegy.
Dear Uncle, is everything you love foreign
or are you foreign to everything you love?
We’re all animals and the body wants what
it wants, trust me, I know.
- Warsan Shire, Midnight in the Foreign food Aisle. From Bless the Daughter Raised by the Voices in Her Head (2022).
I know
the heart loves him too, can’t
turn away, can’t
break the spell.
- Mary Oliver, Members of the Tribe. From Dream Work (1986).
There’s only one thing I want, don’t make me say it, just get me bandages,
I’m bleeding, I’m not just making conversation.
- Richard Siken, Wishbone. From Crush (2005).