JUST SAY GAY

SoFloPoJo Contents: Essays * Interviews * Reviews * Special * Video * Visual Arts * Archives * Masthead * SUBMIT * Tip Jar

Lorelei Bacht. Fadrian Bartley. Robert Carr. James Champion. Casey Charles. Acadia Currah. Ace Englehart. Nathaniel Farcas. Robin Gow. Caroline Hayduk. A.E. Hines. SG Huerta. Judy Ireland. Andie Jones. Paige Justice. Ben Kline. Koss. Danielle Lemay. Jason Masino. Bryan Monte. Michael Montlack. Kyrsta Moorehouse. F.M. Nicholson. Dion O'Reilly. Kenneth Pobo. David P. Prather. Carrie Magness Radna. Sam Runge. G.J. Sanford. Gregg Shapiro. Alison Stone. Laurie Rachkus Uttich. Keagan Wheat. Cassandra Whittaker.

Lorelei Bacht

molluscan seashells

i have an idea: enter this roofless room,
colour-wash every wall

with surprises: peony tongue, orange
vault of the mouth. leave blame

in the locker. travel and lose
the ticket in the dunes. make a comprehensive

list: indifferences, potentials and
sanctimonies. every goddamned bullet

point. eat it. a group of nudibranchs
is called a decision. forget your 80s

power suit. come be: soft-bodied clown,
marigold, splendid and dancer.

Lorelei Bacht's poetic work has appeared/is forthcoming
in The Night Heron Barks, Queerlings, Barrelhouse, Sinking City,
Stoneboat, streetcake, and elsewhere. They can be found on Twitter
@bachtlorelei and on Instagram @lorelei.bacht.writer. They are currently
watching the rain instead of working on a chapbook.

Fadrian Bartley

No Skin is Too Thick

Let us hold men in our hands
to feel their rough edges between our fingers,
and massage their temper before we misunderstand.

Let us have them sit on balconies and submit to our attentions
and call those moments the vibes,
so their inner voice will speak through cigarettes and the smells
of intoxicated pores through thick skins.

Let us speak to them in silence,
since they already know the meaning of that word,
but not in the shape and form of poetry.

Let them know that giants cannot crush the rain with bare hands,
or sweep away the river with their lashes.

Let them know that it is ok to empty the soul in front of the universe for all to see,
and release the clogged tunnel in their veins.

Let them know that petals bleed when no one is looking,
but birds and butterfly will know.

Fadrian Bartley is a Jamaican writer and is the author of family curses. His poetry is available in a few online web magazines which include, IHRAF- International Human Rights Art Festival. Mixedmag.co, Pif-magazine, Aphelion, and platforms such as allpoetry.com. Fadrian has a NVQJ diploma in customer relations, and his writing focuses on life, nature, and people’s personality. His inspiration comes from within and continuously opening new pages to begin new chapter.

Robert Carr

A Day Without Trousers

To be something pretty, to scratch
the clothes you think I am, drop pants and wrap
in Sri Lankan sarongs I ordered on Amazon.

To step proudly in my prissy garden,
obsessed with floral perfections,

petaled geometries, squeal in heat when groundhogs
strip leaves from the coneflower.
To holler – The flowers! and mean every tooth,

spit back at neighbors who roll their eyes.
To catch and release the most beastly things,

to bawl on the lawn, curse my failed Hav-a-Hart
Trap, attend to the dramas of wishbone
and cantaloupe bait. Husband, I dream

furry rodents choking in midnight, perennial
soil transformed to tombstone. Echinacea,

for headaches, for pain, the salmons,
some yellows, the reds. I know grief is tiresome –
You slam doors; drive off to buy poison.

In your eyes, I’m without a stomach
for bullets or the balls to drown vermin.

Diminishing dreams, you taunt my waking
screams, the sound made by whistle pigs.
Let’s have a day without trousers,

roll sheets of fabric low on our hips, bare chested,
dissolve in bright color. How lovely, together,

to shamelessly mince among half-eaten flowers.

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 Crab Orchard Review, Lana Turner Journal,
the Maine Review, the Massachusetts Review and Shenandoah. Selected by the Maine
Writers and Publishers Alliance, he is the recipient of a 2022 artist residency at Monson Arts.
Additional information can be found at robertcarr.org

James Champion Whitehall, MI

Inventing the Veil

We are making love to ourselves in the dark.
It makes a ghost,
doesn’t it boys. We ignore it as it stalks
us, pacing room to room,
holding ourselves, flickering
in compact
mirrors. No lipstick, no
sticky sentiment. We snap
shut like ungodly clamshells—we’ve
nothing to offer, no pearl
for public viewing.
It is our soul-thing, our opal gleam.

Boys, we must now be precise, undaunted
as the surgeons we really are. Let’s
pull ourselves
on in the woods, like a sheath
of smoke, our strange-sexed nylon stockings.
The mascara of night
applies itself to us. We
blush. It’s a shame.

We really have let it come to this.
The mourning
dove weds our reality to
the morning—
a melodic glue. In the obscene light
we see the results
of our night’s cruel
experiments: bra straps clasped onto
thin air, hacked
Barbie limbs, matte-white ceramic
shards in the ditch, like pieces of destroyed moon.

James Champion (he/him/his) is from Whitehall, Michigan.
He has a bad habit of looking only at his shoes as he walks place to place,
but this makes arrival (and the sky) a constant surprise. You can find him
online at @jameslchampion on Instagram or Twitter.

Casey Charles

Luck at First Sight

We had a German shepherd collie mix
who curled up on the braided oval like a fox
in the foyer at the foot of the stairs.
Her name was Lucky because we were lucky to have her,
lucky to sit in the crook of our fig tree
and watch her chase Bob the milkman
in his dairy truck down Seabury,
our street lined with blue agapanthus.
I wanted to find out what luck was,
why Mom played the slots at Crystal Bay
came back like the Silver Dollar Lady in Virginia City.
Why I smoked Lucky Strikes like the mechanic at the plant,
why his veined arms and tank top
dove down to the deep end of my pooling want,
why why me cried out when I got the virus
from a man I thought I loved. Who the Fool
in the Tarot was. How luck was supposed to be a lady
and not a lad. My lad pointing to water beds in Echo Park,
the ones framed by hard wood. Why I was convinced
the lottery would never be mine to win,
as if some configuration, or algorithm, some convergence
or will of God, some windy house built by Chaucer
or wheel spun by buxom blonds could prefigure
unsold copies, lost elections, a mealy peach--
something as simple as warming the bench
for every scrimmage, a slur hurled from a locker,
a bottom drawer of form letters, a pair of crossed eyes.
Was it aptitude or attitude, fear or a few extra pounds
that led to star alignment and Scorpio, to fix blame
on some lonely raven, find behind my prophecy
some wizard’s die or lot cast long ago.
I tried to use evidence of lost balls, flat tires in the Mojave,
an archive of pink slips and low credit scores,
a history of unreleased bindings and broken skateboards,
bad grammar and failed chemistry, tried to turn the past to providence,
self-sabotage to fate’s middle finger.
Proclivity became propensity, abstraction distraction,
chance a kind of writing on a predictable wall. I knew it.
That cat’s color excused my speeding ticket, my guilty plea,
my chance to host two plagues. It’s not my fault,
this decline of democracy in America. I just live here.
I just need a scapegoat in the yard to eat dandelions,
another long nap. I try to be agnostic
but when the only room in Idaho is a river suite for 395 a night
when the dashboard will not crack beneath a fist,
when Joe won’t call me back after countless messages
and my friends trash my kitchen while I’m gone,
when—minor though these be—odious as comparisons are--
determinism again kicks in like a mugging in Manhattan
or a partner who has called my bluff and left for good,
I have to face the sky, cry why to some sadistic overlord,
some angry Puritan with a whip, who, omniscient
and on a mission to thwart the felicity of harmless homos,
has morphed my masochism into a kind of folie à deux
even though I flunked French at State freshman year.

Casey Charles writes from Missoula, Montana and Palm Springs, California--from the deep red north and hot blue south. He publishes in all genres: poetry, novels, essays, nonfiction, and most recently a memoir called Undetectable, forthcoming from Running Wild Press. Lawyer, teacher, activist, dog-walker, Casey Charles works to look into queer questions. www.caseycharles.com

Acadia Currah Vancouver, British Columbia

Little League

Butterflies and a daisy with all the petals meticulously picked off. A game of “Does she
love me, does she love me not” whispered into the grass. And you ask it not to tell anyone.
It doesn’t answer. But that’s okay. It’s grass.
You water that spot on the lawn every day anyway, in case it ever feels unforgiving.
And you’ll sit your heart down at the kitchen table, sigh and say “I’m not mad, I’m just
disappointed”
The first time you kissed a girl, you looked over your shoulder the whole way home,
desire as heavy as the devil on your back. And when you got home, you scrubbed your lips raw,
thinking someone might see the shadow of another girl's lips on yours.
And know.
You know how to be a girl, with keychain wolverine claws and lipstick coffee cups. You
know how to cross your legs and put a pillow over your stomach on the couch. You know how to
be touched like a girl, hard and heavy and mean.
Her hands are gripping your collar, burying her shame-flushed face in your lips.
And you wish you knew how to be a boy, easy confidence and pressing into hips, pushing
back short hair and leaning against a wall.
But you don’t.
So you improvise.
And when you were about thirteen, you went to your friend's baseball game after school.
And tried, honestly, to keep your eyes trained on the dirt-knees players. But despite your efforts,
you find yourself drawn to the fathers, clutching wife-purses, faces red-hot yelling at pee-wee
boys circling the pitch. A groan of disappointment, yelling at the referee, shoving popcorn in
mouth like a starved animal.
And you’re shadowboxing in the East Side Mario’s bathroom. He is nice, all “Get
whatever you want.” and “Tell me about your family”. But your heart, regrown like a deformed
lizard tail, a starfish leg, cannot. He will touch your hand across the table and you want to saw it
off with your butterknife and give it to him, say “Here, take it.”
Just take it.
And you have your hands on the sink, looking into your own mascara eyes in the mirror.
Come on. Let him pay, put his hand on the small of your back and move it to your leg in
the passenger seat.
And you think, so much of love with him and him and him would be about allowance, let
him touch you, let him look at you. You’ll let him push your hair behind your ear, and whisper
you look beautiful.
And you’ll nod, and you’ll want to want.
Leave the bathroom.
“Game face.”
And later you’ll walk down your suburban street on a hot day to a church of which you
do not know the denomination. And it doesn’t matter anyway. You’ll let the carpet-burn your
knees and you’ll ask to love like a woman, silent and starving.
And Father, he’ll sigh like you’ve struck out, put down his foam finger and prescribe you
multivitamin hail mary’s. He will tell you to plant your desire in the backyard, bury it and trim its
branches.
Nothing grows.
There’s a girl, reaching over you to grab her bag “Do you mind?”
“Yeah, no problem.”
And the second time you kiss a girl, she whispers “This is nothing” over and over again.
This is nothing, this is nothing.
And it isn’t.
It doesn’t have to be, she can press her warm mouth to yours in the fluorescent light that
feels like dark. And you can burn like the rosary beads that press into your chest, picture them
scattering on the linoleum if you pull too hard.
She’ll smack your hand away from hers like a child reaching for the cookie jar.
You don’t try again.
And she has a boyfriend. He has big enough hands to love her.
You understand, your chewed-nail fingers are only for catching on nylons while a movie
plays in class. Only to squeeze like a stress ball when she gets a bad test score.
His are to hold her waist, spin her around under streetlights, to hold her face while he
devours her, wholly.
You aren’t hungry, not like he is.
You cannot love loud like a boy, cannot even fathom how.
The first lesbian movie you ever saw featured two women kissing behind a pillar,
pressing desperately, quietly, into one another. Loving good and hidden like they should.
When you were twelve they taught you about love being sacrifice, how Jesus sacrificed
himself on the cross as an ultimate show of love for humanity. And you think about how you
could love your husband, how you must love him if it’d pain you to be with him, to sacrifice
your happiness for a man you haven’t met being the idyllic, sacrificial version of love.
And there are fourteen stations of the cross, all of which are printed in high definition on
the walls of your middle school. And every single one makes you think, why? Why didn’t he put
it down, and run as far away from Golgotha as possible, and stop telling people he was the
messiah?
“Do you like anyone in our class?”
“Oh-, Josh A, I guess”
You understand, later.
The first time a boy loves you, you don’t know until much later. He tells you “I was so
crazy about you! Couldn’t you tell?” and recalls throwing his jacket over a puddle like the male
lead in a vaguely sexist movie.
“I was so obvious back then”
And you meet a girl at a party complaining about downing her second drink, you
volunteer,too quickly, to get her another one “Are you cold? I can make tea”
She looks at you, like she’s seeing past something “I’m okay.”
The third time you kiss a girl, your mouth tastes like lukewarm raspberry vodka, and
she’s leaning into you.
She’s smiling, pecking vanilla lip gloss onto your mouth.
You hadn’t realized how dry your lips had been before.
“This is nothing”
“What did you just say?”
And you’re fun at parties until you’re just a dyke. You can smear your lipstick and giggle
while boys are watching and return to a boyfriend-lap perch without raising alarm. Without
explanation.
“You don’t-like me, right?”
You put down your cross, big and heavy as a baseball-bat. “Of course not.”
The last time you are in a confession booth ever, you are apologizing. And you hear your
mothers voice in your head, when she’d find you eating all the advent calendar chocolate on the
second of december, “Are you sorry you did it or sorry you got caught?”
And you aren’t sure.
You make a home in the term bisexual, finding comfort in it’s ability to tell a half truth
about you. You wear attraction to men like a too-big sweater you get for a childhood birthday.
“She’ll grow into it”
You don’t.
But it works, for a while.
And he’s looking at you across the table “Aren’t you going to finish your breadsticks?”
You nod, “Right, yeah.”
But you don’t let him pay, and you go home early.
And you could allow him to love you, open car doors and look up from under your
eyelashes.
And you thought, maybe, if you just stayed long enough, gave it enough time, you could
train yourself to love him, and him, and him. Practice tricks in the backyard, put yourself on a
leash.
And there, tied to an oak tree, you begin to wonder how to love without training, without
trepidation and meticulously maintained composure.
The fourth time you kiss a girl, her mouth tastes like spit. Her hands, a little bigger than
yours, clutch your hips like a lifeline. And there’s a livewire between you, connecting frayed
t-shirts and ill-fitting jeans.
And you think, to love her would be about wanting. You grab her shoulders like a
steering wheel.
“Thank you.”
She laughs a little. “You’re welcome?”
And you kiss her again.
Again and again and again.
And you love like a girl, low and hazy and sparking.
You know, that this feeling indicates a failure to hold a man like this, like you want to
brand him with your fingerprints And you feel, a little bit, like a child, being called “it” in a
playground game of tag.
“I wasn’t playing anyway.”
You let the grass go dead, you’ve never had a green thumb.
The voice is there again.
“Are you sorry you did it, or are you sorry you got caught?”
And you know, definitively.
“Neither.”

Acadia Currah (She/They) is an essayist and poet residing in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Their work explores her relationship with gender, sexuality, and religion. She is a leather-jacket-latte-toting lesbian,
her work seeks to reach those who most need to hear it. Their work has appeared in The Spotlong Review and Defunkt Magazine.

Ace Englehart

Catching Moments in the Difficult World

for Adrienne Rich

May 2020, after arriving home from our first
overnight camping trip together:

I think of the trail we hiked,
crossing the creek, that steep climb down
into a Tennessee waterfall basin we found
at the top of the mountain.

I think of how many photos we took
trying to capture ourselves in the perfect kiss.

December 1991, Adrienne Rich mentions in a poem
a brutal murder in the Appalachian Mountains:

a lesbian couple camping alone on the trail,
shot at by a man across the river
as they made love.

She did not want to know how he tracked them, but I did.
I wanted to know if it was true, and why.

May 1988, it happened. He had done it,
feeling taunted by their touching. They
had met him earlier, in passing. He had
tracked them. He watched them, pointed
his gun at them and shot. I wanted to know
the name of what evil had been there, what
last words the two women had shared, if her
lover’s hand was the last thing Rebecca felt
or the damp leaves, patiently waiting for help;
whether it was Claudia’s eyes or Appalachian
stars that shone last before her own fading
sight that night. I choked on the horror I read.

September 2020, lost in graduate research one night
and isn’t it funny how words join together so effortlessly
to knock the wind from your chest? Breathless,
detached, like catching the moment before the fall:

I crawled into bed at 2AM that night,
new images in my mind—women the same ages as us,
similar places, names and body shapes--
moments I never want to be caught in,
damp leaves I don’t want to feel in my hands,
eyes I don’t want to watch fade from life
and as I put my arm around the love of my life,
I promise her we’ll bring the gun next time.

Ace Englehart is a 30-year-old Richmond, Va native currently in Yorktown where she teaches high school English and advises the school's GSA. In 2021, she completed her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, and received a Bachelors in English from VCU. Her poems appear in online journal such as Persephone's Daughters, The Timberline Review, and The Appalachian Review. Ace enjoys karaoke, photography, and spending time with her wife Holly, their princess pup Zulu, and black cats Phantom and Phoebe.

Nathaniel Farcas Florida

Loves me not

He loves him, he does,
and this is a frequent cause of the wars waged inside his own head.

At the very least he knows he doesn’t love him in the way he should, the way a
better man than him might--
this helps him settle his mind,
helps him forget at least
for awhile.

He’s been finished with love for a long time now;
he knows he can’t go back and the last thing he wants is to try.
The idea of it makes him feel something he won’t admit is fear.

But he loves him.
Only sometimes, and certainly not most of the time.
He doesn’t love the machine he barks orders at.
When he’s blinded by anger,
ripping at matted hair,
throwing that scarred and broken body down onto the rocks,
he sees nothing worth loving in those gaunt cheeks and empty eyes.

He doesn’t love him when he falls,
when he bleeds,
when he falters
or stutters
or trips up--
nor does he love him when he performs perfectly.
Whatever he feels towards that blind obedience isn’t love; whatever he
feels when he hits him or grabs him or takes what he wants from him and gets
no response isn’t love,
and he knows that.

But he loves him.

It’s in the late nights when they’re alone together, when he’s had too
much to drink and his head
is spinning and his tongue is loose and consequences
seem like a faraway dream,
when he spills his guts out into the world and there’s only one person to listen.

He sees something then.
Perhaps it’s the alcohol blurring his vision,
perhaps it’s wishful thinking--
just him longing for someone to hear him,
to understand how desperately his chest aches, to know the depths
of his suffering—or perhaps the eyes that meet his across the table are softer than
usual.

Sometimes he dares to believe that might be the case.
Things are always back to normal by morning anyway.

But he loves him.

In those rare moments he loves him, and though it’s a sick twisted hopeless love
it’s love nonetheless, no matter how much he hates that, no matter if it makes him
sick to his stomach.

Perhaps even rarer are the times he’ll catch a tender look,
a favor completed he hadn’t asked for—in those moments he feels the
rusted gears of his heart start to creak and turn and shriek like a wounded beast.

Once when he’d been sick, lying in a feverish haze, he could’ve sworn that when
someone had pulled the covers up over him as he lay shivering in bed and placed
their hand on his cheek, he’d felt cool metal against his skin.

His heart had screamed louder then and the gears spun faster than ever.

He knows, always, these moments will mean nothing by the next day.

But he loves him.
In some fucked up way,
which he thinks might be the most he’s capable of,
he loves him.

And sometimes,
when he sees himself side-by-side with him,
when he looks down at his own bloodied hands and knows they’ll never shake as
badly
as the
hands that
clean up afterwards,
when he meets those dark eyes and sees some deep gentle sorrow—

sometimes he can’t help but wonder which of them is more human,
him or his broken old machine.

Stories You Wouldn’t Tell

1.
You and I never meet.
We are both gone
by next year.

2.
You and I meet this time.
We speak briefly. I toy with the idea
of digging around inside your ribcage
for something. Your brittle bones crack
when my fingernails touch them, and
we pass pleasantries from hand to hand
until they slip through our fingers.

3.
You and I fall in love this time.
You jump, or maybe I do.
I like this version least of all.

4.
You and I fall in love this time.
I stay and stay and stay while you rip me apart,
shoveling handfuls of me into the earth.
A bowl of pomegranate seeds glitters in the sun,
red and sticky and sweet. Your lips are
stained with it and when you smile they crack.
I don’t know how this one ends.

5.
You and I fall in love, every time.
Your skin still tastes like vanilla rather than copper
and your knuckles are still smooth. We find each other
and I kiss your eyelids and your lips aren’t scarred
and the sun rises every morning, red and ripe,
like you could bite into it.

6.
You and I, in another life,
in any other life, in every other life.
You and I. You and I. You and I.

7.
You and I fall in and out of love.
I meet a boy whose hands are like hot coals,
like whiskey in my chest. No one else is you.
I don’t want them to be.

8.
I don’t remember if your eyes shone like
beetle shells or coins, or if your breath was like fire.
I don’t remember how it felt to ache for you.
I don’t think there’s anything left for you and I.

9.
It was nice while it lasted, though,
wasn’t it?

Nathaniel Farcas is a 19-year-old award-winning short story author and has been writing poetry since the age of six.
He is a proud member of the LGBTQIA community and his work explores the joy and heartbreak that live within his community.
He currently resides in Florida.

Robin Gow

I Dream the Hospital of Transgender Doctors

Has my doctor always been kind? She says she’s prescribing me
whatever body I need. Then, at today’s visit she asks three times
“Do you have any other questions or concerns?”
My tongue becomes a bicycle avalanche.
I want to ask in return, “Do you ever feel like this?
Do cis people feel like this?” Small on the altars
of our medicine? Always trying to nest in my body?
I am concerned I am too old to be looking for new ways to change
as if one might create me. I want to ask, “How can I learn to
breathe silver?” and “Can you tell me why at night
my blood turns indigo?” No. This would be too much to admit.
When I say all my doctors have been cisgender,
I mean they have all been too certain.
I want a hospital where my doctor is as catastrophic as me—so queer
they’re no longer doctors. They’ll wear pink dresses and tweed jackets.
Mustaches and lipstick. They’ll use a poem as a stethoscope.
There will be a hall of x-rays to make our bones lucid and an IV
of nothing but light. We will be mended but never fixed.
There will be no cures or antidotes.
I want to say Tell me doctor, will we already be dead or just not yet here?
Today, I tell her I want a thicker needle
to draw my testosterone up from the vial but I don’t say
“Why does this have to come in a vial?”
Sometimes to be queer is to long for everything
that is not yet possible. Who else is going to hold onto purple?
Who else is going to learn to breathe silver?
In The Hospital of Transgender Doctors
we often forget we are transgender, not out of fear or shame
but out transcendence—a glow without invented words.
So transgender we surprise ourselves each moment--
a body without systems to name it.
We perform surgery with notebook paper. Write prayers
to our divine and insert them in each other’s throats like resting birds.
No one is in critical condition but also everyone is.
There is a gallery of precipices we gaze into
and there is nothing to be prevented. No one is clean and
no one is saved and everyone stands in a past and a future bedroom.
My doctor reviews the appointment. Plans for STD tests
and a flu shot. I lie to my doctor when she asks for a third time,
if “Do you have any questions or concerns?” I say, “No, I don’t.”

Robin Gow is an autistic transgender and queer poet from rural Pennsylvania.
They are the author of several poetry collections, an essay collection, and the YA novel in verse,
A Million Quiet Revolutions.

Caroline Hayduk Scranton, PA
I never learned

about the planets because there was a boy popping my bra strap in science class & I was too busy
trying to make sure my shirt sleeves were long enough my JCpenney training bra tucked away &
/ the math teacher who compared equations to having a mistress & / the cleaning guy who said
big birthday coming up through windex streaks & / the guy who rolled a poker chip up my thigh
throbbing at me without permission or pulse & / it’s why i can’t cut my hair short & / if a man
stops looking at me do i disappear & / have i been gay enough &/ can i still have sleepovers with
the girls & / do they know how small my hands are & / remembering to ask how are you after
saying anything about yourself & / emily’s mom crying on my porch that she can’t have a gay
child & do you know where they go & / what if my best friend wants to kiss: will god watch too
& / who’s your friend &/ you’ll never be a real person because of your problems with men.

Caroline Hayduk is a queer poet and educator in Scranton, Pennsylvania. She received her MA and MFA in Creative Writing
and Poetry from Wilkes University. She has been published in Penn Review.

AE Hines Medellin, Colombia

Postcards from the Dead

Ten years later, my killers
interviewed from their cells
will say: Matthew Shepard

needed killing. Ten years after that,
my people lay my ashes
to rest in the shining capitol,

under the stone ceiling
of a vaulted cathedral, far
from the fence in that naked winter field,

from the icy prison of Wyoming.
My killers thought I’d be forgotten
when they offered me a ride, then

bound my hands and placed
that filthy bag over my head.
But for ten years, for thirty, far longer

than I was alive, our people remember
my name. It blooms
from their lips like a cold prairie rose.

AE Hines is the author of Any Dumb Animal, his debut poetry
collection released from Main Street Rag in 2021. His work has appeared in
American Poetry Review, The Montreal Poetry Prize Anthology, Rhino, Ninth Letter,
The Missouri Review, I-70 Review, Sycamore Review, and Tar River Poetry,
among other places. Originally from North Carolina, he lived for many years in
Portland, Oregon, and now resides part-time in Medellín, Colombia. www.aehines.net

SG Huerta

Last Night You Said I Should Write More Queer Love Poems

But I just can’t stop watching Selling Sunset,
my TV right past my laptop, this blank Google
Doc that’s been staring me down. Davina (or
was it Heather?) just ordered a macadamia
milk latte, but I doubt it tops the H-E-B
coffee we take turns making each other
in the early mornings.
Lately, this is my only exposure
to straight culture, to (rich and mostly) white people,
to everything we aren’t and would never
want to be. The soundtrack is so consistently
bad– lyrics full of the unearned, unadulterated
confidence of #girlbosses. Would you believe
I didn’t know what a brokerage was until
two days ago? When I watch Amanza struggle
to remember the number of bathrooms
in the mansion she’s showing, I can’t help
but envision our dream home. Some must-
haves: at least one skylight, space for the cats,
shelves on shelves for the books you keep buying
me. Let’s take a shot of less-than-top-shelf
vodka every time an agent’s main motivation
is money, get too drunk to care about these strangers,
and lay in bed together, my head on your chest,
my heart completely yours.

Mortality, Gender, and Other Anxieties That Are Not Unique to Me

Bury me in my cherry red Doc Martens. Gender is a performance & my legs refuse to break.
Bury me with an iced oat milk latte. Bury me far away from my father. Gender is a performance
& I’m stuck backstage. Bury the cis girl I was before you bury the sort-of guy I am. Gender is
lineated poetry & I can’t stop writing prosaic stanzas. Bury me. Gender is. So on & so forth.
Bury my gender? Is that anything? Tell me it’s (I am) something.

SG Huerta is a Chicane writer from Dallas. They are the author of the chapbook
The Things We Bring with Us: Travel Poems (Headmistress Press, 2021), and their work has appeared in
Split Lip Magazine, Infrarrealista Review, Variant Lit, and elsewhere. They live in Texas with their partner and
two cats. Find them at sghuertawriting.com or on Twitter @sg_poetry.

Judy Ireland Lake Worth, FL

D.Q., She/Her

Judy Ireland is a poet, teacher, and amateur photographer.

Andie Jones Akron, OH

Armchair Confessional

I like to wrap myself in
pages of queer love

& sadness. Warmed
from the outside in, I settle

between the words.
But as I write

of the people I love, I am
stripped naked.

My skin a translucent
window to all the ways

I haven’t yet earned the right to lay
my queerness before the world

& call it
beautiful.

Andie Jones (they/them) is a transgender nonbinary and bi+
science teacher living in Akron, OH. They enjoy playing Stardew
Valley, listening to sad indie rock/pop, and eating far too much
popcorn in one sitting. They are as of yet previously unpublished
and currently owe all of their thanks to a special few friends and
partners for being their biggest cheerleaders and editors in all of
their writing endeavors. You can keep up with their art and bad
jokes on Twitter and Instagram at @andie_the_enby

Paige Justice

The Closet

A girl is playing hide-and-seek with her siblings. She hides in the deepest, darkest
crevasse; deep enough so they cannot find her by just opening the door. Time isn’t real in the
closet. At first, she is happy--look how well I’ve done! she thinks.
As time goes on she sits in the darkness, waits in the darkness, becomes a part of the
darkness; her siblings never find her.
She soon starts to think that maybe they didn’t want to find her; didn’t want her to ruin
their fun; didn’t want to be seen with her, or the other kids would make fun of them, too; they
didn’t want her.
The girl crawls towards the door, her hand outstretched; all she finds is cold, smooth
sheetrock greeting her. She paws around, growing more frantic with each passing moment. She is
sure the door is there, knows it is there; how else could she have gotten here?
Maybe this is a dream.
She presses her back against the wall, drawing her knees to her chest. She can’t see, but
she presses the tips of her fingers against her thigh, one by one, until she comes to a stop at the
tenth.
Not a dream, she confirms.
She can’t see, but she begins to hear a commotion. Three sets of feet thump against the
solid oak floors, all coming to a sudden halt followed by the slam of a door.
Who could be with them? she asks herself. It was just the three of them playing. Had her
aunt stopped by, and brought her son?
“Oh, I cannot wait to tell mom about this,” she hears her older brother say.
“Looks like you’re going to be going back to therapy,” her sister taunts.
Before she can question who it is, who they are making their latest victim of bullying, she
hears a voice. Her chest tightens.
“It wasn’t me!” the voice detests. She hears the guilt in the voice.
She hears herself.
This can’t be real, she whispers. Small beads of sweat begin to form on her upper lip. She
hears the voice speak again.
“Just don’t tell her,” the voice pleas, “I’ll do whatever you want.”
She wants it to stop. She wants the darkness to end. She kicks the wall with the flat of her
foot, putting all eighty-five pounds of force behind it. She screams for her life, to be found, for
all of this to stop.
The walls don’t budge. No one can hear her. She is alone.
She is trapped in the closet.
*
Time isn’t real in the closet. She isn’t sure how long she’s been here, how long it has been
like this. She thinks that maybe it has been years now.
She hears everything. She hears the girls at school with their mocking words, their
accusations of her being a predator.
She hears the voice that sounds like hers. She hears the voice that doesn’t acknowledge
her screams for freedom, her pleas to see the light of day. She hears the voice of the liar, who
responds that those girls are “just bitches with nothing better to do” when her mother questions
why she’s heard talk around town that her daughter is a predator looking to corrupt other girls
with the “sickness” she has.
The closet is smaller now. She takes up more space. She isn’t sure if so much time has
passed that she is growing, or if the walls are closing in with every lie the voice tells. She thinks
that it’s probably both.
She makes a bet with herself about which will happen first: she will finally find a way out
of this place—find the door, make her own damn door—or there will be too many lies, no way
out, and she will be nothing more than a mixture of blood and brains left canvasing the walls of
this goddamn closet.
Her bet is on the latter.
*
The girl is now a woman.
For the first time in a decade, she thinks, she begins to see light. There is nothing but
blinding, illuminating whiteness.
The time has come, she thinks. She has finally died. This is the light they had taught her
about in church, the one that she was supposed to follow to take her to her eternal destination.
She hears nothing but the screams and sobs of her mother, the sound of sheetrock
shattering against her father’s fists.
She is confused. She wonders why they aren’t happy to see her, to see their real daughter
—not the imposter who has been living as her for the past ten years.
She begs them to listen. She tells them about how she has been trapped in a closet for the
past ten years, about how someone had locked her in there and took her place, about how she had
wanted to tell them the truth even then but she herself didn’t have the words for it, that she didn’t
understand it, that she still doesn’t.
They tell her she is sick. They tell her she is crazy. They tell her they are going to get her
help, so they can get their daughter back.
Her eyes adjust. Everything looks just as she remembers it.
She looks in the mirror. She doesn’t know the woman staring back at her.
*
The woman leaves before her parents can ship her off to be tortured, to be changed, to be
confined in that closet forever.
She struggles, at first. She has no money, no car, no place to sleep. She has no friends, no
family, no one to call for help.
She finds shelter in old sheds, alley ways, and occasionally under the stars in a hammock
when the weather allows it. She has nothing, but she has never been happier—happy to be free,
to not lie, to be seen for who she really is.
She’s good at hiding it, her homelessness, just as she has always been good at hiding
things. She keeps herself well-groomed, and has enough outfits, that people at work don’t even
question the possibility of her unfortunate reality.
Eventually, the woman makes friends. She doesn’t lie to them about who she is, or what
she’s been through, but she doesn’t talk about the closet. Part of her is still afraid that maybe,
somehow, she will be forced back to that place. The other part of her is afraid that maybe her
parents were right, that she is sick, she is crazy.
She meets a woman, and she learns what it means to fall in love and to be loved for who
you truly are. At first, she is scared. She has never done this. She has been taught that it is wrong
to do this, that people who did things such as this are sick.
She learns that all of the things she was taught as a child are a lie. She knows, first-hand,
that there is nothing more beautiful than a love like this, than the love that two women can share.
The woman whispers soothing mantras and caresses her cheek every night when she
inevitably kicks and screams herself awake, when the memories of the darkness, the
confinement, consume her dreams.
*
The woman has a family of her own now and has made a beautiful life for herself. She
has been with her wife for nine years. She hasn’t heard from her family in ten.
She has a daughter and a son, twins. They have never met their grandma and grandpa, or
aunt and uncle. She hopes that they never do. She will make sure they never do.
She works to help children who are going through the same thing that she did. She runs a
homeless shelter for LGBTQ+ youth and works as a counselor. She helps them process the
trauma from all of the years that they were trapped in the closet, too.
*
The woman’s children ask her, beg her, to play hide-and-seek. She can’t say no.
Inevitably, no matter how hard she tries to avoid it, it is her turn to hide.
She scurries through the house, growing more frantic as each space she finds becomes
smaller than that last, no place large enough to harbor her. She stands, staring. The closet is her
only option.
She hasn’t been in a closet since she was a girl, since she got trapped last time. Her
therapist told her that she needed to do this, to expose herself to her fears, years ago.
She never listened.
The woman hears small footsteps approaching and takes a deep breath. Her shaking hand
grasps the knob, and she finds herself in the deepest, darkest crevasse.
At first, she remains calm. The ticking of her watch allows her to keep track of time. Ten
minutes isn’t too long.
The kids are young. She isn’t worried that they haven’t found her yet.
Her kids love her. Her wife loves her. They want her. She knows they will not leave her
here, alone. They will not allow her to be replaced by an imposter.
Maybe they thought they weren’t allowed in here, the woman assures herself. Standing
up, she steps forward and reaches towards the door. Her throat begins to burn, as her heart
attempts to claw its way out of her body.
Not again, the woman declares, I’m not getting stuck here again.
*
Time isn’t real in the closet. She isn’t sure how long she’s been here, how long it has been
like this.
She knows how to handle this now, though. She has spent enough time here, enough time
fearing being brought back here, that she knows she can find her way out.
She doesn’t give up hope. She doesn’t stop fighting to get out. She doesn’t go unheard.
She knows what she has to do.
Her fists slam into the walls. She can taste the blood in her throat, and her voice is
indistinguishable. She doesn’t know how long she’s been yelling for help.
Slowly, the door begins to creak open; a dark, slender figure towers over her. As her eyes
adjust, she sees her mother reaching towards her.
“Honey, come out of the closet,” her mother sighs, “you were just having another
nightmare.”

Paige Justice is a Professor and Academic & Student Success Director in Huntington, West Virginia.
Her creative writing examines the duality and conflict that arises via the intersection of Queer and Appalachian identities.
Her essay "The Appalachian Black Sheep" is forthcoming in the anthology Riding Fences: Essays on Being LGBTQ+ in Rural Areas.

Ben Kline Cincinnati, OH

Brief History of Saying Gay

Kids have been saying gay since they encircled us
on the monkey bars, sniffing fear in our armpits, jeering
our toes on point and backpack diva graffiti, the hate
curling their grins, too fun to stop, too much to change
until the legislatures reach a disco quorum of dykes, faggots,
sissies, all our friends between revolutions, maybe some p-flags,
every bill a backbeat our syncopated hearts propel
to four on the floor choruses where we find it—freedom
from politics and gods, freedom in our hips and acrobatics
of the wrist, every playground a fall, ankles rolled before trying
again when an open hand says here, hold on, stay beautiful,
and the sun recedes, light pink as heartbreak going on
without us, our knees cracking over the bar, our hair admitting
gravity’s sway, fingers tickling the green blades.

Ben Kline (he/him) lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. Author of the chapbooks SAGITTARIUS A*
and DEAD UNCLES, Ben was the 2021 recipient of Patricia Goedicke Prize in Poetry and the winner
of the 2020 Christopher Hewitt Award for poetry. His work appears in South Carolina Review, Autofocus Lit,
bedfellows magazine, POETRY, Rejection Letters, Southeast Review, The Shore, fourteen poems and many
other publications. You can read more at https://benklineonline.wordpress.com/

Koss

Gayke Manifesto

Gayke is a universal healing modality by which practitioners carry out the Source's will by
turning people gay, lesbian, bi or transgender through energy transmissions—including, and
especially, remotely. God (the Source) has a sensitivity training protocol by which humans are
expected to become less hateful, more compassionate and less judgmental. The primary
component to the sensitivity training is carried out by skillful and dedicated Gayke practitioners
who are now collectively focused on turning the Bible Belt gay by remote means.

Once the Bible Belt conversion is complete, on to Rome and beyond. Conversions have been
increasingly successful with the help of the media, including Fox News (the Bible Belt station),
Facebook and Google. Gayke practitioners have found that the low frequency vibrations of
negative media are conducive to clear channeling and transmission of divine Gayke energy, as
the wave lengths are incompatible. In other words, any publicity is good publicity.

Neither Google nor Facebook have decoded the divine algorithms of Gayke, nor will they.
Higher frequency Source energy is difficult, if not impossible to detect by web crawlers, Google
Analytics or other digital means. Divine Gayke energy has consistently bypassed all government
air and missile defense radar.

Gayke statisticians and tacticians have tracked and ensured success through their own highly-
sophisticated algorithms and an omni-database developed by God. Direct conversions have been
on the rise, with indirect conversions and large-quantity referrals climbing in record-breaking
numbers.

Gayke practitioners will continue to carry out the Source's divine sensitivity training plan quietly,
peacefully, and undetected as they receive new directives through the emerging SCUM
management team, which is finalizing its energy-based protocol through divine instructions from
the Source. There is no need to panic, as the conversion process is very painless with guaranteed
increase in loving feelings for all. You may not notice any change once converted until you wake
up in the morning with a same sex stranger (or two), or, perhaps, your best friend, after an
evening of drinking. You may also find yourself wandering into the wrong bathroom or buying
Pez dispensers at the checkout. This is normal. Love yourself and receive the abundant love
around you in the Source-Approved New Age of Universal Love for All.

Koss has work in or forthcoming in Diode Poetry, Five Points, Hobart, Gone Lawn, Bending Genres, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Chiron Review,
Spillway, San Pedro River Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Bull, Westchester Review, Kissing Dynamite, Schuylkill Valley and many others.
They were in Best Small Fictions 2020 and won the 2021 Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Award, plus received BOTN nominations in 2021 for fiction
(Bending Genres) and poetry (Kissing Dynamite). Twitter @Koss51209969. Website: http://koss-works.com

Danielle Lemay Central California

Christmas Card

A college student, I ate ravioli
in a booth at the Old Spaghetti Factory
in Boston, Massachusetts, 1995
with three friends: a husband, his wife,
and a soon-to-be-ex friend who says
Let’s line up all the gays
and shoot ‘em.

The husband, now a U.S. Congressman,
and his wife share their family Christmas photo
online in December 2021
with every member toting a gun,
and not the hunting kind,
unless they’re hunting people,
killing large groups at a time,
all in a line.

Danielle Lemay is a poet and a scientist who grew up in Florida
and now lives in central California. Her poetry has been nominated
for Best of the Net and has appeared in SWWIM Every Day, California
Quarterly, San Pedro River Review, and elsewhere. Read more at www.daniellelemay.com

Jason Masino

I wanna talk

I wanna talk about confidence
& panic attacks in the grocery store
& induced seizures from my favorite childhood episodes of Jackie Chan Adventures
& stubbing my toe on a glass coffee table

I wanna talk about the danger
of throwing yourself into an Uber for 15 minutes just to get laid
& not sure if you’ll make it back in one piece but also not really caring

I wanna talk about the craving
of $3 hot dogs grilled on the sidewalk with too much mayo & not enough onions & of all
the mixed drinks, just like my heritage, bubbling into something deadly, waiting for more chemicals
- chemicals on chemicals

I wanna talk about proper grammar & how it’s inherently racist but I implore its use so I’m just
another pot calling the kettle black

I wanna talk about how I love to dry clean my favorite slacks & wear boots that click when I
walk down the halls so bitches know that I’m coming for their spot

I wanna talk about how it doesn’t make sense that doing it doggy style makes you a slut when we
collectively know that that title is reserved for missionary

I wanna talk about horror films & taxidermied animals on the bookshelf & how I’d fit in nicely
on top as a bookend

I wanna talk about us & we & them & how Zoloft costs too much but mixes nicely with
Prosecco & cheesecake

I wanna talk about big mouths & big brains with balls to match & how they can barely fit into a
skirt so we call it a kilt

I wanna talk about how you can’t shut me up but continually shut me out, shut me down, grind
me into fine powder and rub me into your gums

Jason Masino (he/they) is an artist and a Los Angeles native, he received his BA in Dramatic Art from the University of California,
Davis in 2010 and his MFA in Poetry at Regis University in Denver, Colorado in 2022. His work has been published in Cultural Weekly,
Inverted Syntax, Rigorous, Call + Response, Squircle Line Press, and others.

Bryan Monte

The Bonfire

Magnus Hirschfeld (1865-1935); Brown University Library, 1985

I.

Will I ever hear your name unless I say it?
You, the great-grandfather of my history--
doctor, confessor, writer, orator.
Your name is missing from the university library.
White hair and a mustache, hand resting on your chin
face framed by wire glasses and a cravat,
I study your picture from a book
found by accident in a second-hand store
as if it were a mirror
or a map of directions.

The year your friend visited Wilde in jail
you founded the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin
giving up your private practice for the problems of thousands
students in Charlottenburg, metal workers in Neuköln, prisoners in Tegel
free medical advice, lectures open to the public, marriage counseling.
For this they fined you again and again.
For 36 years you fought with charts, talks, films, books and exhibits,
a witness to the sexual diversity of humanity.

II.

The city’s libraries are to be cleansed of books of un-German spirit…
Students of the Gymnastik Academy are to start with the Institute of Sexual Science.

The Berliner Morgenpost, May 6, 1933

The rumble of lorries came early in the morning
rattling windows like a sudden storm, the pounding
spreading from the front door down the corridor
from room to room, students demanding keys
to offices, records, libraries they could ransack
pouring inkwells over files, throwing books, charts,
card catalogues to the bonfire below
a brass band playing drinking songs
burning pages and ashes floating
back up through the windows.

In a torchlight parade a few days later
they carried your bust on a pike down the street
to the Operplatz:
Freud, Einstein, Zola and Proust
Wilde, Carpenter, Gide and Marx
two truckloads, ten thousand of your irreplaceable volumes
fed to the flames, students and soldiers singing
at this, their destruction of understanding.

III.

I thumb through the university’s card catalogue once again,
this high-rise cemetery, this file of the dead and the living
numbed by your conspicuous absence
and the presence of those you opposed
still quoted in Canada’s and Great Britain’s parliaments
fifty years after your death
my magazines turned back
at both borders the bookstores warning:
Please do not list the name of your press
on your mailing envelopes as Customs
seizes all gay material as pornographic.
Blackened by the ashes of the world’s greatest crematoria
I sift through the layers of crumbling books
searching for the lost civilizations
of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Bryan R. Monte was shortlisted for the Hippocrates Open Poetry Prize
and the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award in 2021. His poetry has appeared
recently in The Arlington Literary Journal, Irreantum, Italian Americana,
and Kaleidoscope Magazine (UDS), and is forthcoming in the anthology,
Without a Doubt, (New York Quarterly Books). His book, On the Level:
Poems on Living with Multiple Sclerosis, will be published by Circling Rivers
in November 2022.

Grief

Midnight Marching Band

Michael Montlack New York, New York

Pee Wee’s Playhouse

We loved you. Neutered.
Tied. Tight-pantsed pansy.
Tireless tour guide.

Where was your big adventure?
Unzipped in an adult theater.
I imagine you telling cops:
Why don’t you take a picture?
It’ll last longer!

We let you lust after a bike.
Dance for your life to “Tequila”
on a bar top in platforms.

Who said you could have more
parts than your action figure?

You may own the playhouse—
but who said you could play?

Michael Montlack is author of two poetry collections
and editor of the Lambda Finalist essay anthology My Diva:
65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (University
of Wisconsin Press). His poems recently appeared in Prairie
Schooner, North American Review, december, The Offing,
Cincinnati Review, and Poet Lore. He was born in Hialeah,
Florida and lives in NYC.

Kyrsta Morehouse Los Angels, CA

Come Home With Me

When I say I want to take you home, I don't mean
to where I rest my head now, I mean to where the seeds

of my first trauma were planted. Let me be your tour guide
of the nest that I leapt from the first second I was able

to - praying I had enough strength to fly on my own. I want to kiss
you in every closet I have ever come out of. I want to walk you past

the locker I spent four years wanting to crawl inside
of. I want us to dance through the apple orchards

and sing to the trees that grew up alongside me. I want to hold
your hand in front of the church that believes God loves everyone

except those with rainbows in their bloodstreams. I want
to watch you shake the hand of the woman who sewed

me together in her stomach for nine months. I want to fill
our mouths with soft-serve by the lake, loving you in the first

place a boy proclaimed he liked me. I want to see main
street through your eyes and hear the hum of my sleepy town

through your ears. I want to sketch your perfect smile on a take-out
napkin and tape it to the wall of the one art gallery in town, attaching

a post-it note at the corner labeling it: Priceless! The truth
is I’m trying to figure out who I am now and where I am going,

but I can show you for certain where I have been. I can show
you the houses I grew up in, the theater that became my second home,

and the mailbox that almost became my headstone the night my tire blew
me across their lawn. Let's lay beneath the old oak tree

in my mothers front yard as I read you entries from my middle school diary.
I’ll serenade you with the song that played during my first

kiss as I whisper My god, I love you into the dandelion I slip behind your ear;
make a wish my darling, wish this moment will never fade away.

Kyrsta Morehouse is a young bisexual poet. While her main career is as a celebrity makeup
artist in film/tv, she is quickly making a name for herself in the world of poetry. In 2019 she self-published
a chapbook of poetry and in 2021 has been published by AniHeroin Chic, Honeyfire Lit, and Tealight Press.
Find her on instagram @kyrstashae.

Raymond P. Neubert

F. M. Nicholson

Before Class

I don't drink diner coffee, as a rule.
It doesn't sit well, reminding me all day
of the reason I sat in Mr. Z's Eatery at 6 a.m.
looking into your eyes as you asked me
whether I'd ever have the strength
to be for you what you need me to be,
chewing on eggs and grits most notable
for being cheap and hot, knowing my hair
would smell like bacon all morning.
I could only promise to try.
Which is why my stomach reminds me
of all the coffee I drank as we talked,
and how your face was buried in my hair
in the elevator as we raced to class,
me smelling like breakfast, running late,
remembering last night's passion.

F. M. Nicholson is the author of two published books of poetry,
and her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies. Journals
include Pearl, Margie, and Evening Street Review. Anthologies have included
the award-winning Touching: Poems of Love, Longing, and Desire and more recently,
Feminine Rising. Nicholson is a dormant member of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle,
and recently retired from 4 decades of teaching in an urban public high school.

Dion O’Reilly Soquel, CA

I Knew Them Once

Remains found in 1,000-year-old lavish burial in Finland may belong to nonbinary warrior
Headline from ZME Science

There They were
and I too—They and I—We were
like pollywogs or puppies, waggly, just beginning,
our bones still bendy, and our minds, still
as beings who knew nothing
of naked or dressed, didn’t
know girls didn’t show their little
beady nipples to the air. They and I were so small, we still
weren’t purely Boy or Girl, hardly different
from bugs. We were like clouds, and clouds
were a place we could live.
They and I, big as the wooded hill
we never got to the end of, but passed our time sitting
in hollows, moss-quiet, or looking
closely at minnows in Bell jars, the way the sun
lit their flesh to silver when we let them
go. Then, there were those clumped
fungi, flesh colored and daisy-shaped, dry outside and damp
within that we licked on the underside and never
took sick. As we got older, we laughed at our bare
bodies in the mirror—They and I—I of the V-shaped
mons, and They of the lady waist
and small penis almost like a pimple to be popped or a silly
handle-like nose—until They drifted away, mist
in the window, and I woke up—someone saying,
I had to choose between a war-spun
daddy or a Cher-faced mom.
I stood looking at myself, without my fearsome
friend, until I thought I saw Them,
their forever-eyes lit in our secret
Oneness, and all the world telling me: I was split-
half of two. This was growing up.
This was the first goodbye.

Dion O'Reilly’s debut book, Ghost Dogs, was shortlisted for several prizes including
The Catamaran Prize and The Eric Hoffer Award. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle,
Cincinnati Review, Narrative, and The Slowdown, among others. Her second book
Sadness of the Apex Predator was chosen for the Portage Poetry Series out of University of Wisconsin's
Cornerstone Press. She facilitates workshops with poets from all over the US and hosts a poetry
podcast at The Hive Poetry Collective. Learn more at dionoreilly.wordpress.com

Kenneth Pobo

Nearly Gone

I don’t remember sliding
into a great backwater
of light. I had hoped to see
my mother’s face.

“Crimson and Clover”
played over and over,
not sure from where.
After the song ended,
I returned to life.

My husband held my hand.

He looked like someone
just visible
from across a river.

Kenneth Pobo (he/him) is the author of twenty-one chapbooks
and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet
(Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City (Circling Rivers), and Lilac
And Sawdust (Meadowlark Press). His work has appeared in North
Dakota Quarterly, Asheville Literary Review, Nimrod, Washington
Square Review, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere.

David B Prather Parkersburg, WV

Immortality―of a Sort

Gay boys―queers―faggots―all
lined up―all up and down the street―
all texting their boyfriends―all sending out
electronic kisses―air filled
with their homosexual passion―atoms
of breath resting in their lungs―

waiting for that proton moan
to build―waiting for that charge
of―a man’s lips―a man’s body―
let’s not be gross here―call a spade
whatever you want―god(s) help us―
the world is reborn

for the nancies―and sissies―the world is
reborn for the freaks―for the men who love
men―for gods’ sake―
the hotel at the end of the street has no vacancy―
no babies born tonight―this is all about love―
okay―this is all about filling the empty void

of life―this is all
about planting seeds that never grow―this
is all about playing god(s)―letting god(s) win―
the sheets are turned down―the curtains are open
just enough to make passersby curious―
the clothing is on the floor―

passion always throws clothing to the floor―
passion knows nothing―that is to say, nothing
about caution―forget that―this is the moment―
hell on earth―heaven on earth―
sin of a lifetime―love of a fruit―forbidden? ―or? ―
funny how a word becomes a question―funny

how a question becomes a word―
funny―funny ha ha―not funny gay―
that’s so gay―biker bears in leathers
strut down the street on their hogs―no wonder
the world hates them―they’re so―strange―
queer―there must be something wrong

with them―there must be something unusual
going on in their brains―a misfire―
a neurological disease―disease―disease
of the soul―the very soul―the very center of the world―
I’ve heard it said that Jesus was a faggot―
I don’t know―

pretend I didn’t say that―pretend
the two men in the hotel room aren’t cheating―
we know they are―
pretend they never had wives or children―
pretend this isn’t happening
right now―hallelujah! ―

the headboard rocks slowly at first―
tapping the wall―what am I saying? ―
this isn’t happening―this isn’t love―this is an experiment
in lust―in touch―in mustn’t and must―god(s),
how did we get here? ―half-eaten
sandwiches on the table by the television―

every light in the room hot with tension―
air conditioner exhaling a ragged, cold breath―
the room―a lung―pulsing
like a mythological beast―I don’t know―
chimera―cyclops―minotaur―fury―fuck―
I just wanted to say fuck―breathe

slowly―feel it in your mouth―now
they are kissing―their wives are going to be pissed―women
always know―they just play along―hope―
just a phase―just an aberration―just
a tryst―just another man―oh, god―how
could this happen? ―pretend―pretend

it isn’t happening―it is―all over the world―
this love is old―this love is ancient―historical―brutal―
god loves a fag―don’t look at me
that way―god loves you, too―
strike me dead for saying this―but I see,
I get it, I understand―

why the hell don’t you? ―
this is life―this is all of us
falling―all over ourselves―to understand―to live―
this is all the men along the street―wondering
what his looks like―or his―this is all
the women in the world wondering things of their own―

this is me still alive―this is our crazy world
spinning―spinning―in a vacuum―around a light bulb
in a galactic room―this is every man kissing the world―
to taste the earth―to come back home again―knowing―
the earth is dirty―the earth is wet―the earth
is home―god(s) help us―this is the taste of infinity
―and none of us can ever get enough

David B. Prather is the author of the poetry collection, We Were Birds, from
Main Street Rag Publishing. His work has appeared in several print and online journals,
including Prairie Schooner, Seneca Review, Poet Lore, Sheila-Na-Gig, and many others.
He studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory, and he studied writing at
Warren Wilson College. He lives in Parkersburg, WV.

Carrie Magness Radna Manhattan, NY

Nikki (no. 89 of Women’s names sensual series)

I took my main squeeze
to my high school before my cousin’s wedding.

All the old pictures of me playing basketball
was before I transitioned,

when I acted like a tough guy with wild eyebrows,
so they couldn’t see the real woman underneath--

even 20 years later, it’s quite a
surprise to meet my old form again.

My partner understands: she just wants
to make out with me by the bleachers.

Carrie Magness Radna is a cataloger at the New York Public Library, an Associate Editor of
Brownstone Poets Anthology (2022-), a singer and a poet who loves traveling.
Her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Cajun Mutt Press,
Alien Buddha Press, Rye Whiskey Review, First Literary Review-East, et al. Her poetry collections are
1. Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press, 2019) and 2. In the blue hour (Nirala Publications, 2021).
Born in Norman, Oklahoma, she lives in Manhattan.

Sam Runge Eau claire, WI

Queer Awakening Sonnet to ANOHNI

“For today I am a child
For today I am a boy”

   - The Johnsons, “For Today I am a Boy”
You were the first to teach me
       I’m the Bird
I’m the embryonic host
       I’m the Egg Itself
Conceptualize me —
       Boy as Germinal Spore, Queer as Blossom.
Clamoring at the ether:
       Unleash my heart
Read my femboy palms -- guide me
       Through wastelands of evaporated joy
Help me navigate this Triptych
       WASPs of Gehenna, Suspended Liminality, Queer Beyond —
Help me unearth myself
       Tenderized & kicking — I am defiantly alive.

Sam Runge is an undergraduate student at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. They are originally from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

G. J. Sanford

at the queer halloween party

In this moment we are rudderless, storm-bound,
already empty of anything worth salvaging

& regretting our recent decision to brave the dance floor
which is to say the living room carpet next to

the speakers tall as some of the people. can’t remember
if this is Ke$ha or Katy Perry but the bass anyway

has us thinking our insides are caught in a stranglehold
a kind of lockdown preceding that kill-

joy stalker, sobriety—always creeping up when the occasion
turns tolerable enough thx to a delicately-

constructed high. when did we get so twitchy?
woah, we’ve developed a stutter.

we’re not going to freak out—we’re not—but damn
these plastic spiders dangling from silky green “webs”

seem intent on gouging out one or both eyes
but yooo here’s a Satan with a handful of salvation

so oops, there she goes! and no one would be wise
to bet against us in this super spooky contest

to see how close to abandon ship we can all get.
code red—what kind of disaster

is that person wearing? sort of enjoy that it’s crotchless,
but the hat is overkill. might we make it

to the kitchen? sure if we try to talk now to—god,
anybody, we’ll likely only blubber on helplessly

about the news, about how fucking weird things
are—they will have asked, right?—and how

they’ll never not be weird and how that’s just
such a fuckin bummer, y’know?

but hey, it’s okay, we’re super chill. anything could happen,
really, and it’d all be fine. someone’s son could kill

our buzz talking about football when we fail to avoid his
massive frame stationed near the door to the garage,

or the roommate whose name we forget could put his fist
clear through the living room wall on a dare

by his friend, the freshman occultist. an aging alcoholic might slur
the entire roadside desert drug stash monologue

from Fear and Loathing in that shirt and that hat and those shorts,
or a stranger with an AR-15 might open fire—

probably time to wait in line again for the bathroom, chat up
that girl in the accidental raccoon costume

(said she thought the ears were a cat’s) ...or let’s not think of lines
or anything to do with them. but this process

of forgetting is untenable. tomorrow is already chalk on the tongue,
some dead kids' vigil, bc coming down always tastes just like dust.

G. J. Sanford is a queer poet & writer birthed & corrupted in the American high desert who now
writes from the Pacific Northwest coast, ancestral land of the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes
of northern Oregon. A graduate of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Nevada,
Reno, their writing has most recently appeared in publications such as Waxwing, Poet Lore, Ninth Letter,
Frontier Poetry, december magazine, Salt Hill, & Pidgeonholes.

Gregg Shapiro

Ken-undrum

When Earring Magic Ken was put on display
in his shocking pink box, almost 30 years ago
at FAO Schwarz and Toys “R” Us, he flew off
the shelves as if he had fairy wings. Adorned

with the promised plastic silver hoop of his name
in his left ear, blonde highlights, whitened teeth,
tanned skin, strong jawline, and tweaker’s pupils.
The tight-fitting lilac mesh shirt emphasized
his chiseled pecs; even minus nipples there was
potential for arousal in the right (or left) hands.

Bulging biceps strained the fabric of the rolled-up
short sleeves, and his six-pack abs earned Ken
shirt-lifter cred. The purple pleather vest was
a questionable style choice, something you might

see on someone from Northwest Indiana strutting
down Halsted Street in skintight pants, desperately
trying to fit in, but standing out like a genital-less
plastic, injection-molded doll. The baggy black
jeans, polished black shoes (not boots!), reminders
of the era’s fashion confusion. Ken wore the ultimate

accessory around his thick neck. At the base of
the “silver” chain, a polished cock ring, untarnished
by lube and bodily fluids, got the attention of gay
men in every urban, suburban, and exurban location.

Flocking to the toy sections of WalMarts and Targets,
departments they’d only visited when doing guncle
duty, shopping for birthday and Christmas presents
for nieces and nephews. Snatching multiple armfuls
of gay Kens, making sure the doll was the best-selling
version in its 60-year history. Unbeknownst to Mattel,

the real magic occurred when the doll became a necessary
distraction from hours spent at the bedsides of friends
and lovers in hospital AIDS wards, attending funerals
and memorial services, burying countless loved ones.

Gregg Shapiro is the author of eight books including the poetry chapbook
Fear of Muses (Souvenir Spoon Books, 2022). An entertainment journalist, whose
interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications
and websites, Shapiro lives in South Florida with his husband Rick and their dog Coco.

Alison Stone Nyack, NY

Alison Stone has published seven full-length collections including Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award.

Nonbinary

Asked first about a baby – boy or girl?
Dogs announce by how they pee, boy or girl.

Teachers don’t say, Hi, Blacks and whites, Sikhs and
Jews. Why the identity boy or girl?

Many languages label lawn mower,
car, volcano, sneaker, tree, boy or girl.

Tiresias’ body kept changing.
Each time, he felt, couldn’t see, boy or girl.

Buyers queue at the copping spot. Dealers
ask How many? H or C, boy or girl?

Folks with misspelled signs rage against they, claim
supremacy for he/she, boy or girl,

vote for laws insisting genitals are
destiny, a fait accompli. Boy or girl

decided by God. Some cultures have five
categories, some have three. Boy or girl

colors have changed. Once pink was saved for
sons. In some myths, the moon’s he. Boy or girl

boxes for everybody, but Bowie,
Boy George, and Grace Jones broke free. Boy or girl

styles have mingled. Long hair, a suit and tie,
eyeliner don’t guarantee boy or girl.

Blood-streaked, she walks across the border, once
a nurse, now a refugee, boy or girl

wrapped in her arms. On the blurred ultrasound,
is that a penis or knee? Boy or girl?

Some mothers eat the placenta. Does it
taste sweeter or more salty, boy or girl?

Stone isn’t alone adoring someone
born beyond the binary boy or girl.

Laurie Rachkus Uttich

To The Student I’ll Meet in 10 Years Who Grew Up with the Don’t Say Gay Bill

Honey, I know you don’t need to be saved. I know
you found your place and your pen and here you

are learning to lift your words and shape them
into a spear that just might silence someone else’s

tongue, but can I drape my weight over your shoulders?
Can I pull your third-grade self into my chest? Can I

place my privileged person into a story Florida won’t
let you be named in? Let me bookmark the space

between who you were born to be and who some
man you grew up believing thinks you should be. Let

my paper-thin hands hold open a door that exhales
into a room you can rest in. Baby, you’re beautiful.

I know you haven’t heard it enough. But I can see
you, a crystal that lifts its head to the light, and every

sharp cut of stone slides to its knees and readies
itself to reflect the wonder of you are and who you’re

on your way to becoming. Listen, I don’t know how
to climb a wall Florida keeps building. I don’t know

how to slip into that self of yours so many seem hell-
bent on silencing. And I can say gay and I can say gay

and I can say gay, and, honey, I will, I will--Jesus,
I promise you I will—but can your baby-self hear me?

Can the kid you left behind, the one holding a purple
crayon in a wooden, attached seat, in the middle

of a Florida suburb, lean into the beauty of your
birthright? Baby, please. Staple your words to my back.

I know they’re only yours to shed. But let me carry
them. Let me share them. Let me call you my own.

Laurie Rachkus Uttich is the author of Somewhere, a Woman
Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt (Riot In Your Throat). Her prose and poetry
have been published in Brevity; Creative Nonfiction; Fourth Genre; JuxtaProse;
The Missouri Review: Poem of the Week; Poets and Writers; Rattle; River Teeth;
Ruminate; Split Lip Magazine; The Sun; Superstition Review; Sweet: A Literary
Confection; and others. She teaches at the University of Central Florida and
frequently attempts to sneak her 60-pound dog into the classroom.

Keagan Wheat Houston, TX

Dear ___,

Oh how I’ve owed you care,
an ending gratitude, poetic lines:
some springing verse rowing
a pond or sauntering along a seam,
some cinematic false-wall
apocalypse. I didn’t know what gaiety
I was entering. Had I known better then,
I would’ve made more room
to devour, to savior. Each violent
line bringing me back again.
All too simple for harris or Long Soldier.
Enamored by legacy, by claiming
devotion through recovery. Please
let me keep Emily. Please let me
keep a self. Call in tips
and sick. Comfortable concrete
steps leading to apertures, to did
you know you can wrap yourself
in queer grass, keep suits and a garden
hat in the same outfit.

Keagan Wheat (he/they), a born and raised Houston poet,
writes about trans identity and congenital heart disease.
His work appears in The Acentos Review, Kissing Dynamite,
ALOCASIA, and more. They are the author of microchapbook,
Come to the Table (Black Stone/ White Stone 2022); he has a forthcoming
chapbook, Pressure Come Back through Bullshit Lit. Check out his
interviews with Brooklyn Poets and Poets and Muses. Find them @kwheat09.

Cassandra Whitaker

Queer the Wolf

Queer the wolf, queer
the mouth shouting south
over south over everything, queer
that mouth so all is fine
in the south, for once. Queers
in the mouth of the wolf. For once,
let the straight way be swallowed
by a mouth flowing southward
towards a mouth as large as time.
Queer the rifle, queer it
with pride, queer the tank,
and queer the plane, the battleship,
the cranes that coddle
missiles into their skins. Queer
it all. What matter is it
to the earth where the grass learns
to grow? Which way is right?
Which way shall I be? What matter
is it to those who are not growing?
The wisdom of our knowledge,
the lengths of our reach, touch
upon touch upon touch.

Fuck the Wolf

The wolf is a bully’s bully,
a shadow, until it’s not.
Fuck the wolf with the moon
squeezing borrowed light
into a screw to undo the wolf
by attaching emptiness to emptiness
to be full. Why can’t you? Be Full?
Fuck up the wolf with a pipe
of want, with a hammer
wanting. Do not stop
until all the teeth
lay like broken rocks
at the moon’s feet. The wolf’s mouth
full of the south, fuck
the wolf with a hand me down
fist from a generation back
that aches and pines and wants
to make the wolf scream
for the small feasts
the wolf made and ate
and ate and came back
the next day to gloat
about their emptiness. Fuck
the wolf with its own
mouth, stretch it around
south to slide it up the hole
where all its hunger
comes out and becomes hunger
again. Fuck. The. Wolf.

Cassandra Whitaker (they/them) is a trans writer from rural Virginia.
Their work has been published in or is forthcoming in Barrelhouse, Fourteen Hills,
Kitchen Table Quarterly, The Little Patuxent Review, Foglifter, Evergreen Review,
The Comstock Review, and other places. They are a member of the National Book Critics Circle.