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Jeff Walt

Issue 149 - LGBTQ Poetry

Updated: Jan 30, 2022

In this special LGBTQ poetry issue edited by Jeff Walt, we feature work by



 

Copyright © Elovkoff.



Michael Boccardo


Litany After a Week’s Worth of Rain

I asked my body if it could bear indifference.

Then I asked about consequences.

& apology & musk straddling a bent knee.

I asked for permission in a language I translated into silence.

I asked the moon how it felt to be consumed.

I asked for a bridge soldered from insecurity.

Each night the bed asked for proof,

& then the next night, & the one that followed.

When I asked him what it meant to wake beyond

his golden hour, the darkness made of my mouth

a room where I wished him

unmarried. Loneliness asked our hands

how long they’d been apart. I asked

disappointment to sweeten his gums,

but only before I asked less

of his bones, & more of the mercies my teeth picked clean.

Sometimes I asked the sweet calligraphy he storied along my throat

to speak, & when it did the days crawled

back inside of me. Because I could not leave

him, I asked denial to soothe the blow, & the blow

burdened my suffering with gardens.

How could I not ask about beauty?

About doubt & shame, & the chimes outside

my window still kissing

after a week’s worth of rain. He asked,

during love, to press against the version of me where hunger

spent the whole night running.

& I let him I let him I let him.

Without forgiveness, without blessing.

The way the sun strikes every mirrored surface,

& asks nothing of its own reflection.



Copyright © 2021 by Michael Boccardo.



About the Author


Michael Boccardo’s poems have appeared in various journals, including Kestrel, storySouth, Santa Clara Review, Mid-American Review, Iron Horse, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, and Best New Poets, as well as the anthologies Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose, and Art on HIV/AIDS and Southern Poetry Anthology, VII: North Carolina. He is a four-time Pushcart Nominee and a finalist for the James Wright Poetry Award. He resides in High Point, NC, with three rambunctious tuxedo cats. Additional work can be found at www.michaelboccardo.com.



Jennifer Perrine


Breasts


I can’t quit looking when, on the jam-packed train, a woman slips her tank aside, lifts a nipple to her infant’s lips. So casual, like the new mother at work who leans against a restroom stall, making small talk while the machine affixed to her chest whirrs away. I want to avert my gaze


but I too know how to objectify, despite my best feminist attempts to undo what magazines and videos—all those cleavage shots—have taught me. Once, in lieu of a women’s studies exam, I sat with college classmates to take topless teatime on the quad. I clutched my mug


just so, upholding my activist path. I did my utmost not to gawk, to brush off taunts, to act natural, but I was not born this way, sporting this klutzy flapping albatross, swaying lumps that bump and squish against bartops, that hurt if I so much as jog. At six I first saw through


my older sister the body time would equip me with, how the smooth, unbroken country over my ribs would round to hills, to dunes shifting with the wind. I implored every god who might listen to rescue me from destiny, to exorcize these unruly imps of flesh. Some divinity enjoyed


a laugh at that, delivered an abundance I cannot flatten with any manner of contraption, except for a binder tight enough to muzzle my breath. Maybe another deity put in my path each partner who, with one liquid flick, could conjure a thrill of wonder from what I’d tried to


hide. Surely a higher power placed me among a sea of queens who, before a pride parade, peeled off my bra, bedazzled my bare skin, whooped as I shook my jewel-clad moneymakers,

my rack, my jugs, my cans, all my mama gave me, sexy sacks of dense, unused milk glands


that I haul into the doctor each year to be checked for error in the code, for fatal defect. Now, in the bath, I elect not removal but reacquaintance, marvel at your vexing heft bent by a hazy plane of water into the optic trick through which you break our jail, finally float free from me.



Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Perrine.



About the Author


Jennifer Perrine is the award-winning author of four books of poetry: Again, The Body Is No Machine, In the Human Zoo, and No Confession, No Mass. Their recent short stories and essays appear in The Gay & Lesbian Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and Literal Latte. Perrine lives in Portland, Oregon, where they co-host the Incite: Queer Writers Read series and teach creative writing and embodied social justice practices to youth and adults. To learn more, visit www.jenniferperrine.org.




Steven Riel


Shoot to Kill, or, You’ll Be Glad You Used Glade


Since I’m a fifth-grade fag

who gets throttled in the skunk-cabbage swamp

where the teacher’s aide can’t see,


better to pretend I’m

the high-heeled mom in the commercial

protecting her split-level family—

the Glade Lady who shields what she can

from what reeks. Better to press with a manicured finger

a recessed plastic button as gracefully

curved as an Edsel’s dashboard.

Better to target with—look—disodium phosphate

any enclosed & tight spaces

where germs or Viet Cong

cluster: diaper pails, disposals,

fringed ditches around rice fields

egg-beaten by helicopters. No place to hide.


No way to escape.

Better to say my tummy aches & stay home.

Better to wave a sweeping wand—

oh, if I had a wand like Glinda’s

that would—poof!—change me into a spray of freesia

guaranteed by the makers of Johnson’s Wax.


On TV, above the coffee klatch’s bridge game,

one curlicue squirt, & stuffiness just seems to vanish.

Better not propose a science project

tracking the fate of floral-sachet molecules,

whether they sponge overcast skies. A trade secret

makes indoor air fresh as all outdoors.

Better not mail in a postcard

asking for the ingredients.


At quarter past noon, the news anchor

tallies yesterday’s usual

domino death toll.

As the world turns, better to glide

with an Aqua-Netted bob

from toilet to hair trap to garbage can

in a starched, full-skirted dress.

Better not wonder what mothers ask themselves

during afternoons over irons.

Better not dwell on rice.


Instead I advance, finger poised

to make cigarette smoke & last night’s

liver fumes sweet as a spring shower

thanks to a harmless chemical

that eradicates odors & frees up

an hour for girly boys

to inch into elbow-length rubber gloves

& savor the zest of miraculous

Easy-Off as it turns hard

black grease into soft brown soap

I just rinse down the drain.



Copyright © 2021 by Steven Riel.



About the Author


Steven Riel is the author of one full-length collection of poetry, Fellow Odd Fellow (Trio House, 2014), with another, Edgemere, forthcoming in Sept. 2021. His most recent chapbook Postcard from P-town was published as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared in several anthologies and numerous periodicals, including The Minnesota Review and International Poetry Review. He currently serves as editor-in-chief of the Franco-American literary e-journal Résonance.



EJ Colen


June July


To the hummingbird a dog is not as fast as a cat.

But the teeth glint.


Does the night never really come

at all in these

two weeks in the gut of summer?


Not in the moon skirting the horizon, or in azure hue,

stars settle in a mouth-shape in the trees

until the mouth line glows

with a neighbor’s quiet approach.


So we fill a glass to share, liquid in and out,

until our red bodies burn—

until the itch of salt water, like a gentle thought,

rinses off in shower.



Copyright © 2021 by EJ Colen.



About the Author


Queer artist / teacher /editor /writer EJ Colen’s books include What Weaponry, a novel in prose poems, poetry collections Money for Sunsets (Lambda Literary Award and Audre Lorde Award finalist) and Waiting Up for the End of the World: Conspiracies, flash fiction collection Dear Mother Monster, Dear Daughter Mistake, book-length lyric essay The Green Condition, and fiction collaboration True Ash. Nonfiction editor at Tupelo Press and freelance editor/manuscript consultant, EJ teaches at Western Washington University.



Debbie Hall


Stepping out a Sliding Glass Door after William Stafford Stepping out my sliding glass door I find a Lesser Goldfinch lying on its side, stilled upon impact. There are a great many windows here, to bring the outside in—wind rush, Star Jasmine’s perfume, the clatter of crows. The sun can be relentless in Southern California, glass panes mirroring the trees and birds back to themselves, dazzling mirages of the real behind them. I cradle the tiny bird in my hand, body still soft and lukewarm, pupils fixed, the claws on its feet curved, as if clinging to the memory of a slender branch that held its slight body upright. I don’t know how one can fairly call this bright being lesser. I stroke the finch’s yellow chest, defend his worth to the universe and apologize--in a language clumsy and unmelodic—for having so many windows, for my home’s oversized footprint. The need comes upon me more each day to do some sort of penance for all we humans have broken, to move beyond witness and elegy, extract more kindness from my heart before asking forgiveness from the disappeared.

Copyright © 2021 by Debbie Hall.



About the Author


Debbie Hall is a writer whose poetry has been published in the San Diego Poetry Annual, Sixfold, Poets Reading the News, Writers Resist, Bird’s Thumb, Califragile, Gyroscope Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Pulse and elsewhere. Her essays have appeared on NPR (This I Believe series), in USD Magazine, and the San Diego Union Tribune. She is the author of the poetry collection, What Light I Have (2018, Main Street Rag Books), a finalist for the San Diego Book Awards and an award-winning chapbook, Falling into the River (2020, The Poetry Box). She received an honorable mention in the inaugural 2016 Kowit Poetry Prize.


José Enrique Medina


Let’s Suppose


Let’s suppose that you love me, that the pipes squeak

when you turn on the water and fill the tub.


Is it day or night—in your imagination?


Please say day, because I want to see

the sun hooked on the little golden hairs

on your legs, I want to see

the vein between your toes jump

when you stand on the ball of your foot

the moment before entering

the bathtub.


There’s a triangle of light

on the floor, a piece of the day

entering through the window,

making the orange tones and black freckles

stand out

on the maple boards.


My robe falls

in that triangle.



Copyright © 2021 by José Enrique Medina.



About the Author


José Enrique Medina earned his BA in English from Cornell University. He writes poems, flash fiction and short stories. His work has appeared in Best Microfiction 2019 Anthology, The Los Angeles Review, and San Diego Poetry Annual. He is a Voices of Our Nation (VONA) fellow.



Steven Cordova


Grindr Dick Pic

Ceci n’est pas une pipe


This is not a pipe.

It’s a Freudian archetype.


To hook up with your type—

be it stove pipe, blow pipe,


or perhaps an overripe pipe—

swipe left or swipe right.

This is not a pipe

but it’s circum-sized.



Copyright © 2021 by Steven Cordova.



About the Author


Steven Cordova’s full-length collection of poetry, Long Distance, was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2010. His poems are forthcoming in New Orleans Review, and have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Callaloo, The Journal, Notre Dame Review, and the Los Angeles Review. From San Antonio, TX, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.



Robert Carr


The Suicide Dinner


Chilled wine tilts in silver sleeves

as conversation turns

to end of life— romantic ways

they’d like to go. These men I love

understand, bristled brushes

with death—all good talkers

though over salmon I’m in no mood

for unlikely endings.

My attention drifts through

open windows, beyond the dining table,

where gnarled hemlocks creak.


My old friend describes a favorite

red, the 2014 Opus One he’d take

down to the dock at twilight.

Seconal, piled like salted almonds

in his dead mother’s gilded bowl.

I’m unconvinced. He has no cash,

no idea where to find Barbiturates.

This friend’s husband loves an ocean

swim, says he’d go at high tide

in Penobscot Bay, clockwise swirl

of currents, Virginia Woolf. But no,

he couldn’t give up the sun.


We catch up on the latest signs

of age—prostate grapefruit, sun-

mottled scalps. The youngest of us

describes his latest vampire facial.

Centrifuged, blood cells smeared

on punctured skin by handsome cosmeticians.

He’s always looked for love in

younger men, convinced he’ll die alone.


Tall hemlocks, waving near arched

windows, aren’t deadly. They just live

with a lethal name. I finish my ice water.

I’ve looked into deep hemlock,

spotted cowbane, stems veined

purple as old arms mistaken for wild carrots.

My sock drawer’s lined with amber

bottles, overprescribed for pain.

Hemlock neurotoxin grows just down

the street. I’ve seen it mimicking

Queen Ann’s Lace, Valerian Root,

Ginseng. I make a wicked tea.

My husband’s last to speak,

evokes a Catholic God—recalls

his mother’s Alzheimer’s, the threat

of mirrors when one no longer

recognizes self. He won’t die by his hand,

can’t imagine forgiveness

from a God he’s not sure he believes in.

Over macerated plums, Stephen

describes a recurring dream:

I throw him through stained-glass windows

in a high rise we once owned.

He suspects if he becomes his mother,

I’ll push him along.



Copyright © 2021 by Robert Carr.



About the Author


Robert Carr is the author of Amaranth, published in 2016 by Indolent Books and The Unbuttoned Eye, a full-length 2019 collection from 3: A Taos Press. Among other publications his poetry appears in the American Journal of Poetry, Crab Orchard, Massachusetts Review, Rattle, and Shenandoah. Robert recently retired from a career as Deputy Director for the Bureau of Infectious Disease and Laboratory Sciences at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org.



Jeff Walt


All Day


I heard Mrs. Lee scream Kill me! Kill me!

from inside her house and I did not move.

At noon, the dogs in the neighborhood

began barking. Hear something, did they,

that they couldn’t bear?

The television said E. coli lurks

in my laundry and kitchen sponge, and toxic

waste has leaked into the drinking water.

A bright disc with many lights hovered

in the afternoon sky above the backyard fence.

A small child came to my door and asked

if I wanted to buy a chance—Yes more chances,

I said, and took twenty. Now between the blinds

bats start to swoop nooses.

The sharp moon appears, machete

swung high.



Copyright © 2021 by Jeff Walt.



About the Author


Jeff Walt has work in Cimarron Review and the anthology,

(Moon Tide Press, 2021). His Book, Leave Smoke (Gival Press, 2019),




Copyright © by Faustasyan.

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