Pride Poems 2026

1. Today’s Poem “She gave me COVID on our first date” by Marlena Chertock

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   She gave me COVID on our first date
   swore it was just allergies
   
   as she sniffled in the passenger seat
   on the way to Urban Roast.
   
   I offered to drive,
   put her apartment in Google Maps —
   
   it was only a block away.
   We sat outside by a fire pit,
   
   even though winter wasn’t quite through.
   The wind picked up, but the fire stayed lit,
   
   blazing in her blue eyes.
   We talked about normal
   
   first date topics —
   how we came out, our trauma,
   
   if we want kids.
   Before the night ended, we were
   
   sharing ideas for a second date.
   As we said bye in my car,
   
   I didn’t kiss her,
   knew I’d see her again,
   
   felt like there was no rush,
   no one’s timeline but our own.
   
   And a 14-day quarantine
   after she tested positive for COVID,
   
   then the two stripes appeared on my rapid test.
   I couldn’t walk
   
   without getting winded,
   put hot sauce on my food
   
   just for some sensation,
   slept for 16 hours and
   
   was still exhausted.
   She got better quicker than me,
   
   like she always does,
   her enviable immune system
   
   (other than those very real allergies),
   tried to plan our next date
   
   while I couldn’t taste,
   a snotty mess surrounded
   
   by a mountain of tissues
   in bed, flailing feverishly.
   
   When I finally recovered,
   after 16 days,
   
   the dates never stopped.
   I think she did it on purpose,
   
   infected me
   so no one else could
   
   ever date me.
   Three years later,
   
   she slept on a cot
   by my bedside while I recovered
   
   from a hip replacement,
   somehow still sweet to me
   
   at my grumpiest.
   And I returned the favor
   
   by giving her the norovirus,
   holding back
   
   my future wife’s hair
   while she threw up
   
   in our new bathroom,
   in the house
   
   we bought together.
   

   Marlena Chertock is a disabled, lesbian, Jewish poet with two books of poetry, Crumb-sized: Poems and On that one-way trip to Mars. She uses her skeletal dysplasia as a bridge to scientific poetry. She has had over 130 poems published in literary magazines and regularly moderates panels at literary conferences, facilitates writing workshops, and performs poetry at open mics and reading series.
   

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2. “Finding the Right Words” by Nico Penaranda

   
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   Finding The Right Words
   Most things start just by circumstance. A decent day.
   
   A bar on the way home from work.
   
   Someone there
   playing banagrams. I joined them and shared words
   
   from a pile like cave farts, noose.
   
   Forming friendship. I wish it hadn’t
   taken so much time to try other things:
   
   concerts at the 930 club, thrifting, moving in together
   One night, they leaned their head
   
   against the normal tensity
   
   of my body, and I unshallowed my breath.
   Connection is the shattering of space between all of us.
   

   Nico Penaranda is a writer and educator from the dc area. He has taught in Howard’s first year writing program since 2022, and he is a graduate of American university’s mfa in creative writing program. His poetry focuses most often on themes of race, rebellion, mythology, and music, and his most recent publications are featured in the Mid-Atlantic Review, Brigid Gate Publishing, and Mistake House Publishing.
   

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   Nico Penaranda is a resident of Petworth.

3. “First Sunday in August” by Bianca Palmisano

   
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   First Sunday in August
   What spell do you cast for too much wanting
   
   sickly sweet smell
   
   empty stewpots
   
   hollow bell ringing vespers chant
   
   chest wide with
   
   secret places inside yourself
   Hide them in
   
   pockets of jean shorts
   
   that don’t fit
   
   a city that warbles
   
   in the heat
   
   wavvy asphalt
   
   all of us melting into
   
   the next liquid dream
   resurrection of a lost summer
   
   licking popsicles on the Spanish Steps
   
   service at the Friends house
   
   lullaby on your recorder
   
   that says the city is your backyard
   If you moved to the country
   
   wheat stalks and dry dirt,
   
   would it follow you?
   

   Bianca Palmisano is the author of two volumes of poetry: The Empty Spaces (2013) and Will This Be On The Final (2017). They are also a registered nurse, sex educator, and owner of Intimate Health Consulting, a business focused on training healthcare providers to offer better and more inclusive sexual health services. Bianca has been writing poetry for over two decades and has been featured in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Lilac Peril (Volume 00), and live poetry readings across the DMV.
   

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   Bianca Palmisano is a resident of Columbia Heights.

4. “On my Worse Days” by Brandon Blue

   
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   On my Worse Days
   I’m always imagining what is not: the bathroom light
   
   is dawn, the dirty carpet the soil I kneel in waiting for wind
   
   that will not come, the blinds,
   
   a flight,
   
   a flock,
   
   a kit
   
   of doves flutter from their rout holes and splat on the floor,
   
   the corner of the wall are a lover’s lips and every cloud
   
   is an ocean,
   
   a mouth I hope will swallow me, drown the day in gray
   
   so I go outside, try
   
   to return things to their rightful place but the dogs barking
   
   sound like jeers, the buildings sway and lean
   
   precarious as children’s toys. The concrete’s cracks are my outline,
   
   is my mother’s spine.
   Desire, you ever-watching eye, it is time to sleep
   
   there can be no want in what has been made clear—
   
   I am not supposed to be here.
   The sidewalk is so full of people knocking into each other
   
   who have just stopped holding hands,
   
   and the joggers, as they brush pass, are only ever the seventy-seven million
   
   three hundred three thousand five hundred seventy-three americans
   
   who voted for the 47th president
   
   who split me up the back
   
   who reduced me to a wind
   that twists in the eaves above my staircase
   
   which can never be anything but a staircase that leads to my apartment
   
   that cannot take me to safety.
   

   Brandon Blue is a black, queer poet, translator, educator from the D(M)V. Their work has or will appear in Foglifter, Frozen Sea, &Change, and more. His work has received the support from Tin House, Aspen Words, and the Virginia G Piper for Creative Writing. Their chapbook, Snap.Shot (Finishing Line Press) was named in Poetry Mutual’s Best Books of 2023.
   

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   Brandon Blue is a resident of Cleveland Park.

5. “Embraced” by Audrey Cahak

   
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   Embraced
   Sometimes
   
   I take the red line
   
   just to be underground.
   
   In silence, in dreams’ projections,
   
   swallowed by the Dupont mouth.
   
   Returning, resuming
   
   I let the long throat
   
   take me down.
   Pacified in soothing hand
   
   of rocking metal, rounded tunnel,
   
   in gentle clasp of Brutalist knuckle.
   
   I thread my way through
   
   fingers of turnstile
   
   As I am
   
   handed down.
   A stomach; a womb; a shelter; a tomb.
   
   The hurt and wounded
   
   I am moving through aorta.
   
   Sweet and sad
   
   cells of every rusted color
   
   Embraced
   
   all
   
   the
   
   way
   
   down.
   

   Audrey Cahak is a wordsmith and artist originally from Houston, Texas now living in Washington DC. She’s a photographer by day, a theater and dance reviewer by night, and a poet and painter when she can find the time. She is inspired by powerful femininity and the omens present in everyday life. Her work has been featured in Broadwayworld.com, The Words Faire, and the MidnightRose reading series.
   

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   Audrey Cahak is a resident of Adams Morgan.

6. “Local Train” by Charlie Davies

   
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   When your arm brushes mine like that
   
   it feels like I am on a local train in a dark tunnel.
   And in the nothingness
   
   outside the window suddenly
   an express train comes into view
   
   its interior glowing fluorescent white.
   In those moments I can see alternate lives,
   
   alternate existences, running parallel to my own.
   The person sitting next to me shifts and I watch
   
   their counterpart do the same, one track over.
   Your leg rests next to mine and
   
   in another train somewhere beneath this city
   our lips meet each other,
   
   your fingers run through my hair.
   Your eyes dart over your phone screen
   
   but in another car, in another station
   they are locked on mine, sharing everything
   
   I feel for you now.
   

   Charlie Davies is an emerging writer, artist, and naturalist originally from Takoma Park, Maryland. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Lilac Peril, Lit Shark Magazine, and How To Wait: An Anthology in Transition. He can often be found talking to birds in the woods or haunting your local coffee shop.
   

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7. “Dumb Inheritance” by Angelique Palmer

   
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   Dumb Inheritance
   Of course, I should tell you about the storage units
   
   a collection of memories behind the whine of metal door
   
   I cannot collect courage enough to open again.
   
   The ache I did not earn, but pay promptly for-
   
   the resentful silence I’ve polished into a shrine.
   Of course, I should tell you about the storage units
   
   the resentful silence I’ve polished into a shrine,
   
   Lethargy lays like an heirloom quilt my family’s winters,
   
   in each itchy stich; stained into unwanted
   
   but heavy with sleepless nights.
   Of course, I should tell you about the storage units
   
   but heavy with sleepless nights.
   
   While mourning, I grew bone-deep fatigue,
   
   jelly for legs, a breathless brunch
   
   no part of me wants to sift through it
   
   again and again and again.
   The box bottom’s sag into a pulp of almosts    on the third try
   
   The guilt of donating the china she saved her checks for    on the fifth
   
   A coat that still holds the weather of my big sister’s shoulders, the way I put it back in the crate
   
   And purse faux leather combusting into a pile of disintegration.
   
   again and again and again.
   Of course, I should tell you about the storage units
   
   How my mother kept everything she used         to replace
   
   everything she used to fill                                  the space left
   
   when life took everything from her
   
   How it was all left to me.
   
   How I’m doing this too.
   
   How this phantom company is so damned lonely.
   Of course I should tell you, of course I should.
   
   The loneliness of wading through
   
   a mine field of mold spores and memories.
   
   Each box a clearing of my throat,
   
   each label, a survivor’s remorse.
   
   Contractor bags filled with mystery
   
   photographs the way they sob decay in their frames,
   
   how this split my living kin into splinters
   This is what was left for me:
   
   not money, not land, but a legacy
   
   of practiced evasion
   
   a struggle to even visualize
   
   the door’s groaning
   
   like a siren song tsunami.
   So, of course, we should speak about how difficult it is to
   
   continue.
   
   Keeping what keeps me stagnant
   
   –bone-deep tired, jelly for legs, wealthy in waste.
   Still, I carry the keys,
   
   tell myself I will open it;
   
   tell myself I will air it all out
   
   tell myself I will set myself
   
   free
   
   soon.
   

   Angelique Palmer is a performance poet, Kindergarten Teacher, and Spoken Word instructor at Wilkes University. Author of two full-length books, she is a member of the 2026 Pride Poems Fellowship cohort and will serve as Fairfax County Poet Laureate until 2027.
   

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8. “Not Going Quietly” by Peter Montgomery

   
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   Not Going Quietly
   “Another world is not only possible,
   
   she’s on the way and, on a quiet day,
   
   if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.”
   
   – Arundhati Roy
   I can hear a new world coming on the loudest days,
   
   drummers thrumming heartbeats at the Pride parade,
   
   go-go music’s energizing beats at a Free DC rally
   
   at 14th and U, drivers honking appreciation.
   Screams of delight at the Halloween high-heel race,
   
   solidarity singers serenading purged federal workers,
   
   dance parties summoning courage and celebration
   
   at the gates of gulags and centers of oppression.
   Bullhorns and boos aimed at architects and enablers
   
   of authoritarian cruelties and brutal kidnappings,
   
   righteously directed rudeness rousting them
   
   from swanky strongholds and comforting cocoons.
   Decide now that you will not be quietly complicit.
   
   Gather strength in silence if that is what feeds you.
   
   Breathe deep, seek peace, find solid ground.
   
   Exhale the joyful noise of liberation.
   

   Peter Montgomery is a researcher, writer, and activist who is relying on poetry, singing, and community to keep him grounded and human in the face of the cruelty and authoritarianism of the MAGA movement currently controlling our national politics. He is grateful for his loving husband, sweet dog, meaningful work, and family and friends near and far.
   

   Peter Montgomery is a resident of Brookland.

9. “for a friend, for when despair is lounging on their chest” by tt santos

   
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   i roll up bible pages and u say
   
   ‘don’t bring those curses down on me.’ don’t play,
   
   u been cursed! from the start, least from the day
   
   u jailbroke ur soul, breathed river-clay
   to life. besides, don’t we got angels too?
   
   what else u think i’m doing when i kneel
   
   between ur thighs but worship? don’t it feel
   
   like heaven in this hell ur burning thru?
   get up! the empire’s making us its bitch–
   
   we need ur sorcery. dig up the streets,
   
   churn through the sewer trash–let loose the Land!
   earthquake the obelisk, it’s made of sand!
   
   no matter how these godfrauds beat their meat,
   
   they’re roadkill ratsnakes–ur a crossroads witch.
   

   tt santos lives in Columbia Heights. She draws, paints, writes, tattoos, and cooks. She aspires to create work that insults the genocidally drab sensibilities of the hegemon.
   

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   tt santos is a resident of Columbia Heights.

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