Pride Poems spotlights LGBTQ+ poets from the greater Washington, DC region, by releasing a new video each day during the month of June, in honor of National Pride Month.

In 2022, Pride Poems featured poems on the theme of Queer Love. Participants were asked to interpret the theme widely, writing about romantic love for spouses and partners, or love of family members, pets, or friends. Thirty poets were selected, and the videos in which they read their charming, often poignant love poems ranged from approximately six minutes to less than a minute in length. As co-curator Kim Roberts stated, “Because the pandemic has been such a difficult time emotionally, it’s been a great relief to focus on love!” Featured poets included university professors, National Slam champions, the co-chairs of DC OutWrite Festival, editors of literary journals and notable anthologies, and winners of national literary awards. They ranged in age from their twenties through their seventies.

  1. “Missed Call” by C. Thomas

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    Missed Call
    
 
    
You’ve reached the voicemail of the 
    
man that used to love you. 
    
Placed no one above you.
    
The man who watched the sun 
    
rise and set before you.
    
All that’s left…a lost 
    
signal from a broken heart.
    

    I loved you…
    
I remember reaching out to touch you. 
    
Your response, leaving my emotions unread. 
    

    Unlimited minutes questioning if my intentions for loving you were worth it. Nights alone, filled with laughing ringtones. Calling you was a joke—me the punchline. I disconnected a piece of me every time
    
I speed dialed your name. 
    

    Foolish to think your heart would answer or acknowledge me.
    

    No emoji for the nights I spent wondering where you were yet knowing another carrier was holding you.
    
Caressing you.
    
Sexing you. 
    
Giving you what you wanted!
    

    Hanging up is your thing. 
    
You live for prepaid affairs.
    
No commitment to a love of your own.
    

    No rollover for the minutes burned crying for you. 
    
My love, an incoming call accepted on your terms otherwise ignore button hit. This relationship has been disconnected. Past due notices received long ago—I never paid them any attention.
    

    I’m confessing a love treated like one-night stands—even then calls were dropped.
    

    Maybe I should have loved you through text message, disabled autocorrect to make lying easy. Should’ve swiped my affection LOL followed with: “Of course I love you! Bae why you trippin?” 
    

    Gave you my all; wanted nothing but you in return. Your plans? Limited in coverage. Wrong extension from day one, my bad for misdialing. 
    

    I’ve redialed the day we met. Never thought you’d hurt me. Confused chirps from your cricket as a heartbeat. I built my life around you. 
    

    I loved you so much.
    
Placed no one above you.
    
Watched the sun rise and set before you. 
    
Everything we had was a blocked call. 
    

    The heart you’ve dialed will not receive any more of your heartache. 
    
Don’t bother to leave a message. 
    
Hang up and never try again.
    

    Copyright © 2022
    

    C. Alexandria-Bernard Thomas is true force of nature and a necessary voice for uplifting the community and inspiring hope. Witnessing him perform, teaching in the classroom, or during a speaking engagement is experiencing love in action. 
    
Non-binary, ladies, and gentlemen, C. Alexandria-Bernard Thomas!
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  2. “My Partner Teaches Me To Speak” by Emily Holland

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    My Partner Teaches Me to Speak
    

    She spoon feeds me syllables in bed. I repeat
    
after her letter combinations we don’t have in English.
    
Consonants stick in my throat. My tongue 
    

    does not yet know how to roll, how to twist
    
into position. Each night, another word: head, eyes,
    
nose, mouth    . Language starts with the body.
    

    She moves my hands around her face and I name
    
each part again. I am not always a good student. Some nights
    
we repeat lessons I’ve forgotten. She tells me words
    

    for everyday things. I learn how to tell her I’m thirsty
    
or hungry, hot or cold. Later she teaches me to ask:
    
Are you hungry? Are you cold? 
    

    Of course, the curse words are easy. I can say shit
    
and pussy with the same sharp point of my teeth. I master
    
please and I’m sorry and thank you for when I know 
    

    I’ll need them. One night, I ask how to say I love you.
    
She tells me in two small breaths. I repeat and
    
repeat and repeat and repeat—
    

    Emily Holland (she/they) is a lesbian writer living in Washington, DC. She received her MFA from American University, where she won the Myra Sklarew Award for outstanding thesis in poetry and was the Editor-In-Chief of Folio. Holland’s poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Nat. Brut, Homology Lit, and Wussy, and the chapbook Lineage (dancing girl press, 2019). Her work has received support from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and Sundress Academy for the Arts. Currently, she is the Editor of Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry magazine, published by The Writer’s Center.
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    Emily Holland is a resident of Adams Morgan.

  3. “Butterfly Pea” by Kim Roberts

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    Butterfly Pea
    

    When I first saw a photo
    
of a butterfly pea, I was pulled
    
by the blue: deep, saturated,
    
the color of twilight. Blue
    
around a white center.
    
Then the Latin, clitoria ternatea,
    

    yes, shaped like a woman’s sex,
    
the tube-like calyx
    
of five sepals partly fused,
    
surrounded by the vivid cobalt
    
of a large rounded banner,
    
two furrowed wings, 
    

    and two wrinkled white keels.
    
When my girlfriend next caresses
    
my wings, will I close my eyes
    
to that twilight blue? When I
    
press against her keels,
    
will she break open in blossoms?
    

    Banner, wings, and keel:
    
this is how we recognize
    
the flower of the pea. My girlfriend
    
is a species of pea. She teaches me
    
facts about the dusk, its
    
variations and anomalies.
    

    The blossoms, edible when tender,
    
turn rice indigo; when lemon is added,
    
the color changes to magenta.
    
Texture of silk, faint aroma,
    
the weight of her as she presses
    
against my hand, the ripe weight.
    

    The fretwork of furrows
    
on that crepuscular blue,
    
nightfall’s legs spread open.
    
Used to enhance memory,
    
to relieve stress, sometimes
    
to amplify a woman’s libido,
    

    it grows on a twining vine
    
in dry and rocky soils.
    
Tender folds gather
    
on its flying concave banner:
    
whispers loiter there,
    
secrets on the tongue.
    

    Kim Roberts is the editor of the anthology By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020), selected by the DC Public Library and the East Coast Centers for the Book for the 2021 Route 1 Reads program as the book that “best illuminates important aspects” of the culture of Washington, DC. She is the author of A Literary Guide to Washington, DC: Walking in the Footsteps of American Writers from Francis Scott Key to Zora Neale Hurston (University of Virginia Press, 2018), and five books of poems, most recently The Scientific Method (WordTech Editions, 2017). Her chapbook, Corona/Crown, a cross-disciplinary collaboration with photographer Robert Revere, is forthcoming from WordTech Editions in 2023.
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    Kim Roberts is a resident of Park View.

  4. “Love Poem: Satyr” by Malik Thompson

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    Love Poem: Satyr
    
after Donika Kelly
    

    Tonight I set the chalice aside
    
&, behind me, I’ve finally shut the door.
    
Out here, a chill wind speaks to me
    

    of wild trees & their cavortings with lightning. 
    

    Love, I recall the stories you’d tell
    
in languid night-drenched whispers,
    

    our slender bed ablaze,
    
dark fire pulsing in my bones.
    
In your absence, I’ve become
    

    something lusting& something lost.
    

    I enter the pub & exit
    
with a chainof paper men 
    

    entangled in my horns—
    

    Malik Thompson is a Black queer man from Washington, DC. He is a bibliophile and baked goods connoisseur. He works as a bookstore manager for Black, queer-owned Loyalty Bookstores in Petworth, DC, and is current co-chair of OutWrite DC, an annual DC LGBTQ+ literary festival.
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    Malik Thompson is a resident of Mt. Pleasant.

  5. “Smoke From Mirrors/Ruins Under the Roller Coaster” by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

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    Smoke From Mirrors/Ruins Under the Roller Coaster
    

    Was it the unfamiliar streets,
    
engulfed by whisper, a labyrinth of uncertainty.
    
 
    
Once I might have traveled this terrain:
    
the shifting curtains, hair brushed from eyes, fences rising brusquely.
    
 
    
But we had never needed the instruments of navigation;
    
we alone had been the cartographers of these fields.
    
 
    
Our hands had cut through the vines of resistance;
    
at the opposite end of the world, I heard your voice.
    
 
    
How then are these planets aligned?
    
Who ensures the edge of this line, the symmetry of these red rings?
    
 
    
Outside the elevated train, an entire cityscape bore witness.  Even
    
without our visibility, the skyscrapers divined the intricacy of our need.
    
 
    
These pages were not torn; these words were not muffled.
    
Through the day’s expansion, this had been no frail articulation.
    
 
    
Despite my entreaties, my insistence on the known city, I was whisked,
    
captive of your whim and whimsy, into an abruptly invoked carnival. 
    
 
    
And it was there, in that frayed underworld, with its mirages and riddles,
    
that I lost sight of you, your undiminished locks, your thick neck, in the
    
               corridor of mirrors
    
 
    
and sat frozen instead on the carousel, unable to disentangle from
    
tinny music, unable to disembark from sticky plastic horse.
    
 
    
But surely that vanishing could never have been foreseen;
    
all steps could not have led to this absence of insight, this ashy oblivion.
    
 
    
Eventually the children returned to chant against the oncoming Coney
    
               Island dark,
    
and heeding the clarity of their call, I stumbled from the shimmering
    
               wreckage.
    
 
    
I had no choice.  Refusing the veil of mangled cotton candy,
    
I glided into the sheath of my solitude, the thorn carpet of my
    
               without-you.
    

    Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is a poet, writer, and Yiddish literary translator. He is the author of two books of fiction, Beloved Comrades: a Novel in Stories (2020) and Prodigal Children in the House of G-d: Stories (2018), and six volumes of poetry, including A Mouse Among Tottering Skyscrapers: Selected Yiddish Poems (2017). Yermiyahu’s most recent translation from the Yiddish is Dineh: an Autobiographical Novel by Ida Maze (2022).
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    Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is a resident of Brookland.

    Previously appeared in Uncle Feygele (Austin, Texas: Plain View Press, 2011). Reprinted with permission of the author.

  6. “Horizon” by Natalie E. Illum

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    Horizon
    

    I will know when our apocalypse is over
    
by the number of skyscrapers we have
    
taken down.
    

    When our love has ruined the skyline, I will stop calling you shelter. I will
    
crawl up 42nd Street, shred
    

    my knees in all that glass. Search through the window casings, wondering if my father
    
built the machine that made them.
    

    Every heart has an incineration point. By sunrise I was already rotting. When you moved out 
    

    the whole neighborhood became a sinkhole.
    
The paintings removed themselves from
    
the living room; the garden buried.
    

    The children we never had started crying out to me. But there were no flesh eating monsters
    
to protect them from. Just us. 
    

    Years later, I think I pass you in what they used to call Bedstuy. My grid, my graphite
    
but there’s no blueprint to rebuild the city 
    

    we once held inside the other.
    

    Natalie E. Illum is a poet, disability activist and singer living in Washington DC. She is a four-time recipient of the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities Literary fellowship, and a multiple Pushcart prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poet nominee. She was a founding board member of mothertongue, a LGBTQA open mic that lasted 15 years. She competed in the National Poetry Slam circuit and was the 2013 Beltway Grand Slam Champion. She has an MFA from American University.
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    Natalie E. Illum is a resident of Shaw.

  7. “Dedication” by Michelle Ott

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    Dedication
    

    I did not think I deserved someone 
    
like you. I have always thought 
    
my hair too knotted to be undone
    
by your slender pianist fingers,
    
my scars too dark and jagged to be stitched
    
closed under the anesthesia
    
of your voice in my ear, a feather-
    
soft whisper lingering on my neck.
    
A hot, thick downpour
    
when I cried my wretched tears,
    
I could not understand
    
why you pooled them in your hands.
    
I could not understand
    
why you would want to.
    
I did not think I deserved someone like
    
you: but this is not a matter of deserving.
    
This is a matter of choosing.
    
To unlock the front door
    
and let light leak through the crack,
    
to surrender to the gentleness 
    
of your hand chiseling away the 
    
calcification of my heart,
    
to find it within me 
    
to love myself
    
as an act of loving you.
    

    Michelle Ott is an emerging poet from the Mid-Atlantic. She is an MFA student at American University earning her degree in Creative Writing, and also serves as the Community Outreach Coordinator for the university’s literary magazine, Folio. Her poetry has been previously published in the Northern Virginia Writers’ Project’s anthology Falling for the Story, and will soon be featured in Black Fox Literary Magazine. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.
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    Michelle Ott is a resident of Van Ness.

  8. “Love In The In-Between” by Dwayne Lawson-Brown

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    Love In The In-Between
    

    My partner wants to steal my dresses
    
Wear them around hips I long to hold close
    
She questions
    
What this makes her;
    
Why eyes linger on my legs
    
In stockings that accentuate what people use to define me
    
She loves the woman I hide inside
    
The way I love her;
    
Deep with want
    

    Questions what this makes her
    
A kisser of queer body
    
Stroker of “them” in “him” trappings
    
Or simply a lover
    
In all the in-between
    

    My partner sits in my closet
    
Rank with the stench of longing
    
And I
    
A pound of flesh worth the work.
    

    Dwayne Lawson-Brown is a crocheting, breakdancing, parent; doubling as a poet and host of various events. Dwayne is foolish lover with a passion for connecting communities. They prove that you are constantly learning, and self-exploration is an ongoing practice.
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    Dwayne Lawson-Brown is a resident of Douglass/Congress Heights.

  9. “Some Nights” by Dan Vera

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    Some Nights 
    

    Some nights I come to bed late, because you are the early riser,
    
the dog asleep at your side,
    
your breath in rhythm with her snoring,
    
or reversed, but always intertwined,
    
And I move gingerly into bed
    
not to rouse you two from dreaming with my own settling down,
    
and I lie there glad in this restful harmony
    
so much so I can’t help myself
    
but move so slowly to your ear and whisper,
    
I love you
    
I love you
    
I love you
    
into your dreaming
    

    So that I imagine the breeze in the trees on your forest walk is whispering that refrain,
    
or the gurgling brook or the soaring bird overhead is singing it to you clearly now,
    

    And if it’s a nightmare you are in, it takes a sudden turn for joy when the magistrate declares 
    
the jury has found you unanimously loved,
    
or the jeering crowd has abruptly changed to cheers to see it’s your beautiful heart on parade in the public square of their now blessed town where bells are pealing in adoration.
    

    Let it be for me to attest that in all places, even in your dreams, 
    
you are loved, 
    
you are loved, 
    
you are loved.
    

    All rights reserved. ® Dan Vera
    

    Dan Vera is a writer, editor, watercolorist, and literary historian. The recipient of the Oscar Wilde Award for Poetry and the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, he’s the co-editor of Imaniman: Poets Writing In The Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books) and author of two books of poetry, Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen Press) and The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books). His work is featured by the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and included in college and university curricula; various journals including Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly; and in anthologies including Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, The Traveler’s Vade Mecum, and The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South. 
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    Dan Vera is a resident of Brookland.

    Reprinted with the permission of the author.

  10. “Making Love” by "Tony Keith, Jr."

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    Making Love
    

    some folks ain’t know
    
Black men could float up here,
    
like this, where we are
    
us, flying inside the blue sky
    
flapping only our softest feathers
    
blowing kisses in-between clouds,
    
causing the wind to bounce us
    
all around as if everything is meant
    
to be buoyant up here,
    
where we are…
    

    where our breath be verses
    
written into the breeze
    
and so, we hang-glide across
    
the tops of tall trees
    
suspending ourselves high above
    
the bottom of sturdy bridges
    
that were built on nothing but
    
trust and faith alone
    

    we are together up here
    
where we are…
    
where, gravity keeps pulling us
    
into our centers
    
causing our cores to warm
    
and our middles to melt
    
and we just be Black skin,
    
hot, smooth, and strong
    
with nails and fingers
    
and toes and wrinkles on hands
    
symmetrical to lines
    
spread across our thick foreheads
    
where we just be black marrow,
    
deep, sweat-soaked, shined up
    
and stashed inside trenches
    
burrowed inside our bones,
    
where it just be dark, berry,
    
very sweet juice 
    

    some folks ain’t know we could
    
squeeze within ourselves, like this,
    
all while holding on to each other,
    
up here,
    
where we are
    
us, overlapping into one another
    
folding underneath brown flesh
    
peeling back and pulling up
    
the private parts of us
    
that keeps our entire Black bodies whole
    
and that make our knuckles swell
    
as if sucking in too much sugar
    
and spitting out something divine
    
ain’t no one up here but us.
    

    Tony Keith, Jr., PhD. is an award-winning Black, gay poet, spoken word artist, and essayist originally from Washington DC. He is a multi-year fellow of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and has featured performances and presented lectures at schools, colleges, and communities around the world. Dr. Keith and his husband, Harry Christian III, were married in 2018 and currently reside in Ward 7 with their puppy, Sage.
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    "Tony Keith, Jr." is a resident of Marshall Heights.

  11. “Lest We Forget” by Michelle Parkerson

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    LEST WE FORGET
    
 
    
These
    
black, brown, beige faces
    
of the least in life
    
took the streets
    
defied empires
    
woman to woman
    
man to man
    
It began ablaze
    
high tacky queens
    
blood-soaked crinolines
    
tear gas
    
mace
    
A few fearless freaks:
    
flip, flamboyant
    
fed up
    
on police brutality
    
the menace of the vice
    
Spontaneous riots bushfire
    
round Stonewall Bar
    

    Meanwhile
    
the 6 o’clock news brings you
    
the blatant courage
    
of the fag frontline
    
America discovers sexual preference
    
still believes in Rock Hudson
    
It is 1969
    
Black and Puerto Rican sodomites
    
proud leather dykes
    
in a faceoff with the world
    
for 3 nights
    
Greenwich Village is a mine field
    
Are you there?
    
 
    
Let us now praise
    
a few good women and men
    
ripe for insurrection
    
one chafed June night
    
pushed to the wall
    
beaten to shadows
    
cutting back the night
    
These, the fringe
    
black, brown, beige faces
    
of the least in life
    
ignited a movement
    
to love in the light
    

    Are you there?
    

    Michelle Parkerson is a writer, lecturer and award-winning filmmaker based in Washington, DC.  Her work has screened at prestigious international film festivals including The Sundance Film Festival, The Berlin Film Festival and AFI Fest.  She has documented the lives of LGBTQ icon Audre Lorde, jazz innovator Betty Carter, a cappella activists Sweet Honey in the Rock, and legendary male impersonator Storme’ DeLarverie. Parkerson served on the faculties of Northwestern University, Temple University, Howard University, and University of Delaware, as well as the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs Advisory Committee and the Board of Mary’s House for Older Adults, Inc.

    Michelle Parkerson is a resident of S.W. Waterfront.

  12. “Sidle and Fold” by Hiram Larew

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    Sidle and Fold
    
 
    
If I could roll over, roll over, roll over
    
If I could might turning and see that it’s true
    
If I could at waking or blanket or shoulder
    
If I could hope closer and reach o’clock through
    
Then I would make restless
    
You would sleep bold
    
I would companion
    
Like sidle and fold.
    
 
    
I would want boldness
    
Nearer and near
    
I would have fingers
    
Crossing the fear
    
Crossing the linen
    
Crossing first pledge
    
I would have fingers
    
Crossing the edge.
    
 
    
If I could roll over, roll over, roll over
    
If I could touch ever and know beyond clue
    
If I could at stretching or window or grinning
    
If I could relying and start assume new
    
Then I could do knowing
    
You could grab hold
    
I could beginning
    
Like daybreak and roll.
    

    Hiram Larew’s poems have appeared widely, most recently in Poetry South, Contemporary American Voices and Honest Ulsterman. His most recently collection, Mud Ajar, was issued by Atmosphere Press in 2021.
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    This poem first appeared in Freezer Burn. Reprinted with permission of the author.

  13. “Meeting” by Joseph Ross

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    Meeting
    
for Robert
    

    We weren’t supposed to
    
meet that night. But the 
    

    June evening air was ready 
    
to speak. Friends 
    

    laughed around us 
    
in their own language. 
    

    We spoke in words
    
and sipped the water
    

    beneath the words.
    
I told you my father’s name;
    

    you whispered yours.
    
Our mothers were already
    

    conspiring in our mutual joy.
    
The wooden walls of that
    

    dining room baptized us
    
with quiet longing.
    

    You wrote your number 
    
on a green paper napkin 
    

    that found its way to my
    
skin. I held it close,
    

    between my fingers 
    
and my chest. I still hold it
    

    there. I saw kindness 
    
at the edges of your eyes. I felt 
    

    a trembling at the edges 
    
of my breath, as if someone
    

    were playing a cello in the
    
distance. As if I had forgotten 
    

    the song’s name but not
    
its ache.
    

    Joseph Ross is the author of four books of poetry: Raising King, (2020) Ache, (2017) Gospel of Dust, (2013), and Meeting Bone Man, (2012).
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    Previously appeared in Ache, 2017, published by Sibling Rivalry Press. Reprinted with permission of the author.

  14. “Bedford-Nostrand” by keondra bills freemyn

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    Bedford-Nostrad
    

    the G train is a gamble
    
no reasonable human being should take
    
unless, of course, liquor or love is involved 
    

    profound musings casually pitched
    
 into the throws of late nights and mixed company
    
while hailing unmarked cabs at unspeakable hours
    
wearing little more than that look of self-pleasure
    
and your best leather skirt 
    

    you bend with the breeze of an unnamed desire
    
never mind that it’s a little too cold
    
for bare legs and vodka on ice tonight 
    

    never mind that it’s a little too late
    
for an exchange of our most intimate desires
    
in the backseat of a black sedan 
    

    the night has led us here
    
somewhere between Nostrand Avenue
    
and a subtle invitation for coffee in the morning 
    

    we ignore what’s at risk,
    
choosing to imagine a world
    
where the only conflict
    
of our post-lovemaking routine
    
is which side of Bedford we will venture
    
for poached eggs and Americanos 
    

    my fantasy is interrupted
    
by the glimmer
    
of your eyes beneath the moonlight
    
of a shifting season 
    

    i wonder if there is space for me there
    
amid that storied gaze
    
and your earnest effort to conceal it 
    

    most pegged you as a force of a woman,
    
but only i knew where
    
you’d been stitched together
    
at the seams 
    

    sometimes by the will of others,
    
more often by a needle and twine
    
of your own making 
    

    keondra bills freemyn is a lover and storyteller originally from South Central Los Angeles. Inspired by the extraordinary beauty of ordinary things, she has shared her work at Recess, The Wing, and the Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center, among others. She is author of the poetry collection Things You Left Behind and the forthcoming collection, Haiku for Lovers.
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    Previously appeared in Things You Left Behind. Reprinted with permission of 67th Street Storytellers.

  15. “Sometimes Sexual Healing Requires A Blindfold” by Regie Cabico

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    Sometimes Sexual Healing Requires A Blindfold
    
 
    
yr like a little dragon fruit
    
yr like a comet 
    
powdered cardamom  
    
about yr puckered lip
    
yr lips are lassis 
    
one of my words
    
about you smoothie 
    
i whisper smoothly
    
in bed this smoothing
    
you thick pie 
    
of a meringue man
    
you & then alone
    
with chromebook
    
over my breasts
    
these keys  & letters 
    
brushing you 
    
in the google docs 
    
going gaga wagging 
    
lagging against sleep
    
in the night light
    
like a lighthouse 
    
light me up marquee me
    
with your electrolyte juice 
    

    Regie Cabico is a spoken word pioneer, having won The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam and later taking top prizes in three National Poetry Slams. Television credits include 2 seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, NPR’s Snap Judgment & TEDx Talk.  His work appears in over 30 anthologies including Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café, Spoken Word Revolution, and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. Cabico received the 2006 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers for his work teaching at-risk youth at Bellevue Hospital.
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    Regie Cabico is a resident of Union Market.

    Reprinted by permission of the author.

  16. “Waiting” by Holly Mason Badra

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    Waiting
    
 
    
Winter branches
    
silhouette
    
 
    

    the darkening sky.
    
In trying to be tender,
    
 
    
 
    
I slice a pear
    
and add cinnamon. 
    
 
    
 
    
The gate swings on a hinge.
    
Imagine
    
 
    
 
    
a crescent moon:
    
the beloved’s ear.
    
 
    
 
    
And in her
    
eye
    
 
    
 
    
a silhouette
    
of winter branches. 
    

    Holly Mason Badra received her MFA in Poetry from George Mason University. Her poems, interviews, and reviews have been published in The Adroit Journal, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, The Northern Virginia Review, Foothill Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She has been a presenter at OutWrite, RAWIFest, and Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here as a Kurdish-American Poet. Mason Badra is currently on the staff of Poetry Daily and lives in Northern Virginia.
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  17. “adventures of the third limb” by Saida Agostini

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    adventures of the third limb	
    

    I want to name our cock chocolate thunder, tammy thinks
    
I have lost my mind. I see our cock as a blaxsploitation heroine
    
resplendent in the finest of neon spandex, draped in golden chains
    
and a velvet cape, stiff in resolution to kick any jive turkey punk
    
muthafucka ass into submission.
    

    our cock has framed pictures of prince on the wall, and listens
    
to deon estus to show her sensitive side.
    

    she is fluent in seven languages, drinks dos equis, can paint, sing gospel,
    
praise dance and is head usher at the church of dynamic discipleship. 
    
our cock is the renaissance dick, and if you are looking at her sideways: 
    
bitch, what has your cock done for you lately?
    

    our cock doesn’t hide when company comes, stalks out butt naked
    
in sequined pumps, shining with lube, sits spread eagled on 
    
the dinner table and says embarrassing shit about things she
    
would do to kerry washington.
    

    and when everyone else leaves, and only the three of us are left, 
    
all limbs and laughter, she pulls me and tammy closer, our pussies climbing
    
up her veined girth.
    

    this is how we fit together-loud, tight and eager, our wails her 
    
composition, agitated aching notes-accesso and broken
    
chord. in the studio later with smokey, outfitted in a double breasted
    
stacey adams suit, matching gators, pinky ring and straw panama hat, she’ll share a blunt, 
    
and then play cruisin while talking shit about how hard we came, and the scent of wet
    
	-but in that moment, 	oh! 	my love!
    

    Saida Agostini is a queer Afro-Guyanese poet whose work explores the ways Black folks harness mythology to enter the fantastic. She is the author of Stunt (Neon Hemlock, 2020), a chapbook reimagining the life of Nellie Jackson, a Black madam and FBI spy from Natchez Mississippi. Her first full length collection, let the dead in (Alan Squire Publishing) was released in Spring 2022.
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    Previously appeared in let the dead in. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

  18. “Let Me Not Forget Me Not” by Tanya Olson

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    Let Me Not Forget Me Not 
    

    Let me not be the last
    
lesbian who remembers
    
our bars Such smoky
    
bars Everyone smoking
    
Serious smokers Cocktail
    
smokers People smoking
    
outside People smoking
    
in Smoking Marlboro Reds
    
Camel Blues Smoking
    
American Spirit cigarillos
    
and cloves Waking to a reek
    
of stale smoke the first
    
reminder you had been out
    
the night before Let us
    
remember these sticky
    
bars For we drank and
    
drank and drinking spilled
    
Spilled Budweiser Spilled
    
Zima Spilled Jaeger
    
Spilled Slippery Nipples
    
Spilled Sex on the Beach
    
Spilled bottom shelf
    
tequila Spilled every rum
    
and coke I ever ordered
    
Spilled them on ourselves
    
Spilled them on each other
    
Fought over the spilling
    
Forgave each other
    
for spilling Drank because
    
bars were the place to look
    
Bars the place a trueself
    
shown Bars a place
    
the trueself seen Straight
    
people seldom in our bars
    
then Straight people with
    
better options than bars
    
with latenight stickyfloor
    
pushyshovey fights Fights
    
over love Love real Love
    
imagined Bouncer steps
    
in to breakup the fight
    
Bouncer a bulldyke
    
in boots hat and tie
    
Hurrah hurrah for
    
these bars and dykes
    
Remember them
    
both forever
    
 
    
Let me not be the last lesbian
    
who found her people on a screen
    
Not the last to recognize herself
    
in the light butches of TV
    
Tatum Kristy Jodie Jo
    
Let me not be the last who
    
learned to crush through
    
the screen MaryAnn Lori Kelly
    
No one knows who you look
    
at when you watch TV No one
    
knows the way you see
    
Let every lesbian always
    
remember our long promised
    
Dusty Springfield biopic
    
Let us count the number
    
of gay boy biopics made
    
during those same years
    
We must always make them
    
make our movies Remember
    
the annual rumor of who
    
this time would play her
    
KD Melissa Adele Nicole
    
We must forever remember
    
Whitney and Robyn We
    
must never forget their love
    
Remember how Cissy
    
and the brothers tried
    
to make them hide their
    
love We heard the words
    
that screened their love
    
We saw through love’s
    
tuneful disguise When
    
Whitney confesses I get so
    
emotional baby everytime
    
I think of you we knew
    
who she was talking to
    
When Whitney states Ain’t
    
it shocking what and then sits
    
for a moment in the heart
    
of that beat before she pivots
    
and drops the line back
    
in the track what love
    
can do we hear the name
    
in the gap Whitney dead
    
now Dusty dead now May
    
we always hear the love
    
embedded in their soar
    
Let me not be the final
    
lesbian to believe
    
Dolly and Ann Richards
    
were a thing Not the last
    
to see them together
    
and recognize it as a love
    
Dolly so solid in polkadots
    
and sequins Ann permanently
    
handsome in those Rose of Texas
    
boots Hurrah hurrah
    
for these stars and dykes
    
Stars and dykes forever
    
 
    
Let me not be the last butch
    
stranded on Last Butch Island
    
Let me not be the culminating
    
bulldagger Not the terminal
    
stud Not the concluding soft
    
butch Not the ultimate stone
    
Somebody has to bring an end
    
to the diesel dykes Someone
    
will be the final Butchie
    
McShorthair in town Surely
    
I can’t be the last to wear
    
my hair like Elvis Not the
    
closing flattop Not the crowning
    
pompadour Let mine not be
    
the finale in a long line of high
    
and tights If I am let me say
    
I am sorry Butches had a real
    
chance to make change and we
    
blew it We lived so far out
    
we thought getting in meant
    
progress Lived so far beyond
    
we felt both diseased and immune
    
When they opened the door
    
right in the middle of our
    
kicking it down we took that
    
to mean we had won And let’s stop
    
this story before it goes any further
    
Butches aren’t being erased
    
Butches aren’t being replaced
    
It is simply become our time to go
    
Extinct only means swallowed
    
by the earth Extinct happens
    
to everyone Extinct just says
    
someday diggers uncover
    
our bones Assistants turn up
    
buckles from our belts Tourists
    
buy commemorative keychains
    
Students sift for boot scraps
    
and wallets An intern designs
    
a sign for the site and queer
    
teens graffiti it the next day
    
A theorist speculates why we
    
played so much pool Some historian
    
earns tenure debating whether
    
80s butches were imagined or true
    
The museum installs a diorama
    
where too tall butches spread out
    
across a too bright bar Everyone
    
is frozen in a distinct moment of action
    
Smoking Drinking Gawking Lewd
    
It is shocking these far future scientists
    
conclude Simply shocking what
    
love can do
    

    Tanya Olson lives in Silver Spring, Maryland and is a Lecturer in English at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). Her first book, Boyishly, was published by YesYes Books in 2013 and received a 2014 American Book Award. Her second book, Stay, was released By YesYes Books in 2019. In 2010, she won a Discovery/Boston Review prize and she was named a 2011 Lambda Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation. Her poem “54 Prince” was chosen for inclusion in Best American Poems 2015.
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  19. “Winter Hours” by Francisco Aragón

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    Winter Hours
    

    Look
    

    at him, curled
    
in a large, plush
    
chair, wrapped 
    

    in sable fur,
    
fireplace glowing
    
just beyond, the angora
    

    nosing the fabric
    
of his shirt,
    
a porcelain vase 
    

    beside the folding
    
screen, draped
    
with silk, his eyes
    

    subtle filters
    
allowing sleep
    
to seep through. He enters
    

    in silence, takes off his
    
gray coat, pecks
    
the slender rose
    

    of his face, a fleur-de-lis
    
—Amado wakes, smiles, snow
    
general over París.
    

    after Rubén Darío’s “De invierno”
    

    Francisco Aragón is the son of Nicaraguan immigrants. His books include:  After Rubén (Red Hen Press), Glow of Our Sweat (Scapegoat Press), and Puerta de Sol (Bilingual Press). He’s also the editor of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (University of Arizona Press). A native of San Francisco, CA, he is on the faculty of the University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies, where he directs their literary initiative, Letras Latinas. He has read his work widely, including at universities, bookstores, art galleries, the Dodge Poetry Festival and the Split This Rock Poetry Festival.
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    Previously appeared in After Rubén (Red Hen Press, 2020).

  20. “When you’ve got the bugs” by Marlena Chertock

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    When you’ve got the bugs
    

    It feels like worms wriggling in my belly, nervous
    
beetles skittering across my chest.
    
They have an uncountable number of legs.
    
Will they crowd my heartbeats, keep me from trying,
    
without knowing what’s to come. Or, maybe
    
it feels more like a persistent firefly fluttering
    
in my brain jelly. Off and on, flickering
    
a reminder, hey, I’m here, hey, I’m here, you feel me
    
still, your feelings are real, distracting me
    
throughout the day in the best way.
    
Liking her, that other word scares the cicadas out of you,
    
feels powdery, like a moth you barely touch and it
    
disintegrates. It feels like you’re peering through
    
a glasswing butterfly, a window into what everyone else
    
seems to have experienced. It must be protected.
    

    Marlena Chertock has two books of poetry: Crumb-sized: Poems (Unnamed Press) and On that one-way trip to Mars (Bottlecap Press). She is queer, disabled, and uses her skeletal dysplasia as a bridge to scientific poetry. Marlena serves as Co-Chair of OutWrite, Washington, D.C.’s annual LGBTQ literary festival, and on the Board of Split This Rock, a nonprofit that cultivates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. Her poetry and prose has appeared in AWP’s The Writer’s Notebook, Breath & Shadow, The Deaf Poets Society, Lambda Literary Review, Little Patuxent Review, Washington Independent Review of Books, Wordgathering, and more.
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    Marlena Chertock is a resident of Cleveland Park.

    Previously appeared in An Ocean of Possibilities: A Zine for Bisexual Visibility Week, September 23, 2020. Reprinted with permission of the author.

  21. “Like/As” by Kristen Zory King

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    Like/As
    

    Each early love a hushed and broken simile:
    
black bra padded, peeking through tank top sheer as—
    

    bubble gum warm and pink around her tongue like—
    
the red-laced stamp of shin guard on skin as—
    

    Herbal Essence in wet braids like—
    
That first kiss by the garage didn’t count
    

    as anything but practice, the boys watching
    
in a circle around us, her mouth like
    

    a humid conclusion, sweet as watermelon lipgloss.
    

    Kristen Zory King is a writer and teaching artist based in Washington, DC. Previously published work can be found in Electric Lit, The Citron Review, and SWWIM among others.
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    Kristen Zory King is a resident of Mt. Pleasant.

    Previously appeared in Rejection Letters. Reprinted with permission of the editors.

  22. “The Garden of My Agony” by Danielle Badra

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    The Garden of My Agony
    
 
    
Always. Always say always.
    
	Only today can we say our story.
    
A thousand small Persian horses sleeping
    
	safely.
    
 
    
	Yes, the syllable sprains like a dry branch
    
in the plaza with the moon on your forehead.
    
	Come out and shine like a crocus shines
    
when I embrace your waist four nights.
    
 
    
No one knows the perfume
    
	that ignites our alphabet.
    
No one knows the martyrdom
    
	half lost in a pollen dusted lawn.
    
 
    
	Do not question elegance. The world opens up to you
    
between gypsum and jasmine.
    
	Do not ask the word what shapes each side.
    
Your body is a fugitive of always.
    
 
    
Enemy of the snow
    
	stamped on a worn wall.
    
A hummingbird of love between the teeth.
    
	This is not what we are; nor what we want.
    

    Danielle Badra is a queer Arab American poet who was raised in Michigan and currently resides in Virginia, where she received an MFA from George Mason University. Like We Still Speak (University of Arkansas Press, 2021) is her first full-length collection. She is the winner of the 2021 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.
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    Previously appeared in Outlook Springs and the book Like We Still Speak. Reprinted with permission of The University of Arkansas Press.

  23. “Too Pretty” by Sunu P. Chandy

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    Too Pretty
    
 
    
October on the subway, roses at my side,
    
kids being loud. One skinny girl
    
with a cap and a pretty smile
    
gets up to give me her seat
    
and takes this chance to sit
    
on her friend’s lap. I read the paper
    
and look over at these girls. So free
    
and easy, they are laughing laughing.
    
I look at the pink pink roses
    
and how I say I am not a romantic
    
and how this whole roses thing
    
is going to ruin my reputation
    
against romance. I watch the girls. I watch
    
the skinny girl in boy’s clothes and pretty smile
    
flirt with all the other girls. So free
    
and easy, they are laughing laughing.
    
 
    
And the man next to me, he is also watching watching.
    
And the man next to me, he leans over and says to me:
    
 
    
Hey, miss, hey miss, that’s too pretty to be a boy, right?
    
 
    
As if somehow that thought disgusts him.
    
As if he wants some agreement about this disgust.
    
And me, I am just relieved that he knows
    
that I am a miss and not a pretty boy. So I just shrug,
    
and I say nothing because I am still
    
afraid. Afraid to say what does a she look like
    
and what does a boy look like. And what does too pretty
    
look like and what is your problem exactly. And I don’t know
    
whether his disgust is that he thinks girls who look
    
like boys should be beat
    
up or boys who look like girls should be beat
    
up because, in fact, we know, they both are. I only know
    
that I was relieved that he did not know my pink
    
pink roses were for a girl and somehow I have this safety
    
of passing.  And I think to myself:
    
You all sitting there, laughing laughing
    
sitting there on your sixth grade girlfriend’s lap,
    
so free and easy, laughing laughing,
    
be safe my handsome girls, be safe my pretty boys.
    

    Sunu P. Chandy lives in Washington, D.C. with her family, and is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India. Sunu’s collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, will be published by Regal House in the Spring of 2023 and is available now for pre-order . Sunu’s work can be found in publications including Asian American Literary Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Poets on Adoption, Split this Rock’s online social justice database, The Quarry, and in anthologies including The Penguin Book of Indian Poets,  The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood  and This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. Sunu has completed degrees in Peace and Global Studies/Women’s Studies, Law, and Fine Arts with a focus on Creating Writing/Poetry. 
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    Sunu P. Chandy is a resident of the District of Columbia.

    Previously appeared in Split This Rock’s The Quarry: A Social Justice Poetry Database. Reprinted with permission of the author. Photo credit: Fid Thompson.

  24. “Trying to Sit Up” by Brandon Blue

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    Trying to Sit Up
    

    A golden shovel after Margaret Atwood 
    

    There are moments when I think of you 
    
lying next to me as we try to fit
    
neatly like children’s toys into
    
each other. You bent, crescent like, me
    
folded neatly into your armpit like
    
you ask. In this position, speaking a-
    
loud, we trade soft things to hook
    
one another with desire, lolling into
    
the mattress, and you say, almost like an
    
agreement, I could happily lie here eye to eye.
    

    Now with only morning light, a 
    
mess of sheets and covers fish-
    
ed from the closet, worm to hook,
    
to wrap myself around, I can only an-
    
swer questions that are left ended-open:
    
What was truly in my eye?
    

    Brandon Blue is a Black, queer poet and French teacher based in Washington, DC. He is a reader for Storm Cellar and Poet Lore and his work has or will appear in [PANK], Beyond Queer Words, Lucky Jefferson and more.
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  25. “Tinguage” by Natasha Sajé

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    Tinguage
    

    What you do to me. With me. What I’ve
    
learned to do with you. A language
    
of bliss, a sublingual, interlingual,
    
bilingual tale that lasts from labial
    
lark through the long light of dawn.
    
A trickle of terroir layered in taste, liquid
    
as thirst. More than touch, less than labor,
    
this lesson in tilt and lather. The tang of a lyre
    
of skin, a lick of liberal tact in tandem.
    
Our own langue d’oc, turtled in time
    
and tinkered by thrill. It’s not lex, not law—
    
but logos, the tabor and talisman of love.
    

    Natasha Sajé is the author of five books of poems, a postmodern poetry handbook, and a memoir-in-essays, Terroir: Love, Out of Place (Trinity UP, 2020). She teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program.
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    Natasha Sajé is a resident of Cleveland Park.

    Previously appeared in Vivarium (Tupelo, 2014). Reprinted with permission of the author.

  26. “Ghazal: San Jose” by Jona Colson

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    Ghazal: San Jose
    

    I remember when he kissed me in San Jose,
    
in La Plaza de la Cultura in the early evening of San Jose.
    

    As beads of perspiration formed underneath
    
his hands, we walked through the streets of San Jose.
    

    I canvassed the bed to wake him in his dreams
    
where I speak to him in English, not the Spanish of San Jose.
    

    In the window as he dressed, the glass showed the pink
    
of his body. Soft lamplight fell across him from the city of San Jose.
    

    Not far from Calle Zamora he kissed me again
    
then walked away. I watched him fade into the city of San Jose.
    

    Jona Colson’s first poetry collection, Said Through Glass, won the 2018 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. His poems, translations and interviews can be found in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and The Writer’s Chronicle. He is also the poetry editor of WWPH Writes (a bi-weekly literary journal). He is an associate professor of ESL at Montgomery College in Maryland and lives in Washington, DC.
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    Jona Colson is a resident of Dupont Circle.

  27. “I Want Your” by Tafisha Edwards

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    I Want Your
    
after George Michael 
    

    sexis my communion wine; 
    

    Class 1 Firearm;
    

    pale ribbon on my handbasket to hell; 
    

    your sex earns a measurable vasocongestional response
    

    (kiss my throat &
    

    my pussy inflates). 
    

    your sex as plea: 
    

    deeper. 
    

    let me suck
    

    your marrow
    

    as promise: 
    

    Darkling, I listen/ 
    

    with my body, I thee worship, 
    

    your sex like Hailey’s Comet; Aurora 
    

    Borealis; Ouroboros;
    

    as 
    

    Manifest
    

    Destiny4th of July firework
    

    and nipple piercings like 
    

    bullets in my mouth,
    

    your sex as distraction;      
    

    as heart 
    

    beat chant
    

    Have you ever been so lonely like you felt you were the only one in this world? 
    

    Have you ever wanted to play with someone so much you’d take any boy or girl?
    

    and the footon my faceand my footon the gas 
    

    your sex as my mother tongue as my hand on my parent’s locked bedroom door
    

    baby the arch of your back makes me feel 
    

    omnipotent, 
    

    my handsspread my legs 
    

    a love letter
    

    between
    

    for you
    

    I want your sex
    

    sex
    

    sex
    

    Tafisha A. Edwards is author of two chapbooks: In the Belly of the Mirror, and The Bloodlet. She is the recipient of a 2022 Regional Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council and a Ruby’s Artist Grant from the Robert Deutsch Foundation. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Apogee Journal, Poetry Northwest, Washington Square Review, Winter Tangerine, and other print and online publications. 
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  28. “At Mount Cristo Rey” by Robert L. Giron

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    At Mount Cristo Rey
    
—near El Paso
    

    We climbed the
    
mount, not any other
    
souls along our
    
way, but the sweet
    
fragrance of roses
    
follows us to the peak.
    
A sunny day in April,
    
yet this pilgrimage
    
is glorious and so
    
I take out my camera
    
and he begins to
    
disrobe,
    
climbing upwards
    
to follow Orpheus
    
out of the pit and
    
I snap the shot,
    
now immortalized,
    
—my love reaching
    
for the light.
    

    Robert L. Giron, author of five collections of poetry and editor of three anthologies, has poetry and fiction in national and international anthologies. He currently is an associate editor for Potomac Review, editor-in-chief of ArLiJo, and is the founder/publisher of Gival Press.
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  29. “Uncontained” by Tanya Paperny

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    Uncontained
    
I feel myself filling up
    
organs greeting each other 
    
as the ship gently rocks
    
then quickens
    
 
    
the open mouth
    
of the water’s pour
    
narrowing
    
my attention
    
 
    
cancelling out
    
everything
    
but the hum
    
of our eye contact
    
 
    
but perhaps it’s not
    
water I’m collecting
    
perhaps
    
some combination
    
 
    
of hydraulic fluid
    
for boundaries
    
salt water
    
for boundary crossings
    
 
    
or simply
    
whatever liquid
    
those damn scientists
    
can’t seem to agree upon
    
 
    
which will soon
    
rush out of me
    
at your push
    
and pull
    
 
    
read the water level
    
at the nipple
    
this container’s
    
meniscus
    
 
    
for signs
    
that it’s time to uncork
    
I’ll gasp
    
at the glowing retreat
    
 
    
rejoice at the tips of
    
your long fingers
    
knobbed and naughty
    
this vessel bows
    

    Tanya Paperny is a writer, editor, translator, and community builder in Washington, DC. Her chapbook & Other Valuables won the 2019 Tusculum Review Poetry Chapbook Prize, selected by Bhanu Kapil, and her poem “Prababushka,” about her revolutionary great-grandmother, was selected as Split This Rock’s “Poem of the Week.” Tanya is at work on a literary nonfiction book about the same badass great-grandmother.
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    Tanya Paperny is a resident of Edgewood.

See poems from: 2023 2022