poems

the perfect queer poem

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The Perfect Queer Poem: For Facing Our Enemies

We stay open, even when our minds are swayed by bitterness and despair, because our queer lives depend on knowing that we don’t have to live like this. We turn…

Natalie —

Jun 24, 2019

the perfect queer poem

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The Perfect Queer Poem: For When it Doesn’t Matter if You Want to Be Her or F*ck Her

H.D. sometimes had a fraught relationship with her own bisexuality, feeling pulled towards either lesbianism or heterosexuality rather than feeling her queerness as an integrated whole. Reconciling her bisexuality was…

Natalie —

Jun 17, 2019

the perfect queer poem

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The Perfect Queer Poem: When You Need to Find Your Body

A gut feeling is intuition, sure, but it’s also something that announces HERE is the body, NOW is the body, RIGHT NOW.

Natalie —

Jun 10, 2019

the perfect queer poem

transgender

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The Perfect Queer Poem: When You Don’t Feel The Need to Explain Anything to the Straights

It’s June, it’s June, we’re living, it’s June. Do you feel our powers rising with the heat, our stares lengthening with the daylight, our desires coming on like freak lightening?

Natalie —

Jun 3, 2019

the perfect queer poem

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The Perfect Queer Poem: For Defining Your Boundaries

The line breaks are hard to take. They make the poem feel like a fight: not knowing when to stop, talking over one another, losing your thread, gasping for air…

Natalie —

May 27, 2019

the perfect queer poem

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The Perfect Queer Poem: For Making an Altar

“Corpse Flower” gathers those petals, each one placed on the altar as every word is placed in the poem. The sweetness of a petal curling up to touch itself.

Natalie —

May 20, 2019

the perfect queer poem

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The Perfect Queer Poem: For a Stone Sensibility

Bishop wrote seventeen drafts of this poem, so that’s one hundred and thirty six iterations of master and disaster. The losses pile up in a life, and each time you…

Natalie —

May 13, 2019

sappho

the perfect queer poem

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The Perfect Queer Poem: When You Need to Break Up With Your Lover Who Is Also Your Best Friend

So much of what we might think of as queer lyric poetry comes is set by Sappho’s example: her attempts to speak her desire so emphatically that it wills love…

Natalie —

May 6, 2019