7.12 / Queer Three
The Forest of Despots’ Daughters
Night Shifts
The last time I saw Donnie, he got drunk on Lemon Lovers and I drove him to the Emerg. A drizzly, freezing-rain kind of night, and I work graveyards hauling laundry at the old base in Cornwallis-mess-hall scrubs in two kinds of marinade, big pallets of Air Cadets’ wet-dream sheets. [...]
Sexual Abuse
Translated by Aaron Crippen
despairing I wandered the night
in despair
Little Brother come with me
a thin man in white with glasses
extended a sisterly hand
and woke me from my loneliness and pain
he took me to the Happiness Hotel
took my shadow
shrunken on a white bedsheet
the lights tearing gray memories
lights snuffing gray memories
lie in [...]
Two Poems
Mail
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Dear Mrs. Thompson,
Sorry if you ever tasted the salt of me
when you kiss your husband good morning.
I hope it didn’t taint your coffee
or make bloody murder of your lipstick.
I killed your marriage, and you
deserve to know that
he is not everything you prayed for,
but maybe his sweet kiss [...]
from Dick Strong
These excerpts from Dick Strong have been presented as a PDF to best preserve the author’s intentions.
The Wake She Leaves Like a Whirlpool
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Something must have happened between then and now, here and there, because Imogen has been ignoring my smiles. It becomes clear I’ve done something wrong when she pulls my hand from the small of her back like a plug from a sink. I washed your hair earlier, [...]
Melanie and Edith
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The exotic fish were dead. Death should never come before noon. That skinny red headed guy who sold exotic fish told me to be careful, feed the fish regularly. He didn’t have faith in me. How could I go back to the fish store and tell him [...]
Three Poems
Boycott trinity
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Is it possible to be a man with a friend. To be a man about it. SHE licks my hand and what I give her is thusly sticky. SHE licks my hand and the whole sidewalk falls from the fervor. Man with a friend watches me [...]
Three Poems
he gay
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my tum has bage in it – a seedy kind.
but it’s fine, my big slick cuz slobs all time:
pretz, peppy, sweet tat fries. no, teddy, you
can’t tag him, he’s my shined bargain find. true,
once chewed tushy takes on pooh. eww? ooh? well,
no b.b.g. gon’ stun holey [...]
The Enchanted Historical Realm
In order to preserve the author’s formatting, this piece is presented as a PDF.
Asking Where
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Sex
Maybe he only took his dick out and the rest of him was clothed except for my mouth a receptacle trained to put the light through. Be at the beach one day for me to find you. Place your dick in my mouth none too gently in [...]
Float
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Say you have a daughter who’s a junior in high school. Say she is head
of the homecoming committee making floats. Say they decide on a float
where the school mascot, the Pioneer, shoots their rivals the Wolves.
Say she tells you she needs several colors of crêpe. [...]
X
I brand myself on the knee with the teeth of a comb
To grow the hair & legs of a centauress
The battering of hooves & churning of cud in my throat stuffed with the Lord like
A window
A blank under my treehouse weeds torn by boys & girls I dream of [...]
Flight
for Travis Casey
You were the book I had opened. All the birds in the aviary died trying to escape, to soar back to you. I tied a message to a pigeon’s leg with orange ribbon. I hate that color, how it reminds me of sunsets, fruit and other things Mama [...]
AD 2012
your used jeep is the first thing we ride in. tunneling your town, two girls, july air coming through windows. your system loud as it could go. rattling truck doors. gnats determined to escape summer, catch our mouths during laughs. styrofoam cups of lemonade flung out open windows come back [...]
JUST TRY
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Don’t worry,
it’s just gender dysphoria again.
It’s just changing planets,
like we’re only so far
from the sun as it is:
Why shouldn’t we be unhappy
with these bodies?
I’m not famous enough
to be doing this alone,
but God if I knew any other way
don’t you think I would’ve been the first
in line to [...]
Two Poems
HUMPADORI JACK SING-ALONG
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Kindly do not forsake this world of jack,
this world, our steady candy in which we don’t do
jack. Is there a one who
would not hang with us, who
would not instant merge, ride up,
and swallow
whole the highs and lows, who
would not sing and stroke the [...]
Bottomless Pit
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What if Tom and Huck Fucked?
Someone has spray-painted “What if Tom and Huck fucked’ on the wall of school. Tom thinks they wrote it to drive Tom and Huck apart. Huck hopes Tom wrote it because that would be amazing. But no, Huck knows, this graffiti happens [...]
You’re Like This and I’m Like
Here’s how I remember it: I must have been God knows how old, maybe six or seven, which is funny because I thought of myself as pretty old at the time. My best friend Jason was visiting from Wisconsin and I wanted him to meet my other best friend Frankie. [...]
The women worked to find positive traits in their madness
Their madness really did, at least, have the most perfect ears. Ruth Ann and Ira remarked on this phenomenon often, at first. Eventually they reverted to their usual conversations about their dinner plans, friends they rarely saw, and all the poor boring straight married women, but these conversations felt different [...]
Cover Art
Him
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HIM annotated in my ancient files
HIM who brought forth teenage hallelujahs
HIM a sly snicker and Brooke Jensen Rainy Night in Georgia
HIM a big man in his soft heart and [...]
Showerhead
The boy who will later be a polo player
wants me baffled and vertical, utterly
in the hallway, monkey-sudden
on a jungle gym. This is deviation:
I had no designs on altitude, knees
flush to the acrylic; all that yellow
was more light than I can speak against.
He talks dirty in diminutives, bears up
under hot water. [...]
Why I Want to Fuck Rupert Murdoch
in memoriam, J.G. Ballard
During these submission fantasies
Rupert Murdoch and the shelf-life of the grotesque. Studies indicate the public’s identification and disgust with Murdoch, as referenced in privately arranged focus groups on behalf of News International. Most startling is how merely handing out survey sheets provoked parasympathetic responses in [...]
We Were Bad
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When she fucked me we imagined we were fucking other people, like Jane, for example, from our chemistry class, with the soft round calves and the horn-rimmed glasses, with the thin ankles and trembling hands. When I kissed her ear and talked about Jane’s slender wrists, her [...]
Cupid’s Matchbox: A Virtual Romance
poemsNpaint
19 / F / Gay / Single
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
Last Online: a month ago.
Ethnicity: Klutz and screwball poet.
Height: 5’7′, a plausible lie.
Body Type: A nomnom hoarder.
Diet: It’s odd, the way animals taste.
Smokes: No way. It’s a metaphor for cancer.
Drinks: Coffee, Chai tea, and your hair.
Drugs: No. (Maybe the arsenic in [...]
Hush
It began as pushing. Pushing each other. In that small room, his room. So many black faces staring at me, faces from magazines, pages torn and taped to the walls. Prince. Michael Jackson. Mary J. Blige.
I admit that I pushed him first.
It was snowing outside. I could hear the students [...]
Transaction
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He’s passed out four times so far. I had a go at him for not sleeping well the night before, not eating properly. He answered with narrow eyes. Had a performance to do. Twenty feet of slick black tarp and he still managed to spit blood on [...]