#queer poets

[lena-oleanderson]

you have to live.

wasn't going to post anything from the new collection before it was fully finished, but in light of recent events

start by staying alive.

[april-is]

April 20, 2025: Poem in the Shape of the Poet Beating Henry Kissinger to Death with Their Bare Hands, Felix Lecocq

Poem in the Shape of the Poet Beating Henry Kissinger to Death with Their Bare Hands Felix Lecocq

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(Today's poem is shared as an image, and includes a transcription of the poem as alt text. If you're unable to see it, you can also find it transcribed below.)

US-funded projects addressing the ongoing impact of Agent Orange in Viet Nam (toxin cleanup, support for those with congenital disorders like the poet's) were disrupted by the abrupt dismantling of US foreign aid programming this year. Along with many others.

Today in: 2024: blessing the boats, Lucille Clifton 2023: Wound is the Origin of Wonder, Maya C. Popa 2022: When the Fox Comes to the City, Patricia Fargnoli 2021: aubade for the whole hood, Nate Marshall 2020: Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand 2019: New Year’s Day, Kim Addonizio 2018: I Know You Think I’ve Forgotten, Jane Hirshfield 2017: The Writer, Richard Wilbur 2016: from Seven Skins, Adrienne Rich 2015: I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life, Mary Oliver 2014: In the Park, Maxine Kumin 2013: To A Sad Daughter, Michael Ondaatje 2012: My Dead Friends, Marie Howe 2011: Staying After, Linda Gregg 2010: Dream Song 14, John Berryman 2009: What We Kept, Megan Alpert 2008: Please Take Back the Sparrows, Suzanne Buffam 2007: It Happens Like This, James Tate 2006: Tantalus in May, Reginald Shepherd 2005: September Song, Geoffrey Hill

A transcript of the poem text follows:

Text is in the shape of a standing person raising a fist in order to punch someone who is lying on the ground holding up their hands in defense. It reads:

hooking up with strange men on edibles is fucking awesome until you’re lying in his bed afterward and you can’t shut up about how much you want to hit henry kissinger over and over until he stops breathing. like, did you know that agent orange is apparently 100,000 times more potent than thalidomide at causing birth defects and to this day vietnamese infants have an elevated incidence of congenital disorders, including heart abnormalities, and like you’re not saying that henry kissinger is the reason you were born with a broken heart but wouldn’t it be so fucked up if he was and wouldn’t you then have every right to press your thumbs into his windpipe until he chokes to death and your hookup is like yeah you’re right that would be fucked up i’m sorry but what did you want to get i’m placing the order now and you say two spicy potato soft tacos please and you let him pay for it because he’s white and you’re too stoned to navigate venmo right now and it’s only like $2 but by the time the food arrives you’ve fallen asleep anyway, hand over your heart monitor, dreaming of kissinger’s blood dribbling out his mouth like hot sauce

[queerasfact]

My friends, [Hussayn] cried out, look over there that young man has just stolen away my heart! He lifted everything I had from me with a glance he snatched my heart from my soul, swiped my soul from my body. I'm dazzled with passion for this youth...

This poem, written by Shaikh Mahmud ibn Muhammah Pir in 1652, describes the meeting, in the mid-1500s, between the Punjabi poet, Shah Hussayn, and his lover, Madho.

If you’d like to hear more about this 16th-century romance, check out our podcast on Hussayn!

[windspoem]

by hayden h. / published in 'the queer gaze', 'adolescence magazine' & 'perfumed pages'

[love-ardour-anarchism]

I have the words "rage" and "hope" tattooed on my knuckles and there's a great deal of things I could say about that that would most certainly sound very pretentious but that I mean on the deepest, truest and most personal level but to summarize it I will say this:

To me rage and hope are two of the driving forces of this world. I think as a society we tend to demonize rage. It's seen primarily as a violent and harmful thing but to me it absolutely is not. Rage is to see a status quo, a "this is how things are" and go "absolutely the fuck not".

Rage is to see how you are being treated, to see how this world operates and to decide you think its cruel, unnecessarily so, and that you won't tolerate it anymore. Rage is, put simply, the emotion of "I am not okay with this" and as exactly that its a driving emotive force that inspires us to ACT and try and change how things are.

Hope is the second driving force I see. Hope is to see how things are, get pissed off and think "we could be better". Things could be better, things could be less cruel, we could live a different way. We could NOT be in pain.

Rage is seeing things and realizing they are bad. Hope is seeing bad things and realizing they could be better.

[carrotpoet]

Looking for points of relation

Everything connects to you, psychotically

It feels like each poem or song

was written for us only partially

And we know the parts that don’t fit instantly

how we’re something new and ever familiar

Done so many times over in as many ways

[ratsintrenches]

Happy pride month to Siegfried Sassoon and his bisexual ass ❤️‍🩹