excerpt from The Body in August

by Robin Coste Lewis

…

I believe in that road that is infinite and black and goes on blindly forever. I
believe crocodiles swallow rocks to help them digest crab. Because up until
the twentieth century, people could still die from sensation. And because
my hunger is so deep, I am ashamed to lift my head.

…

from VOYAGE OF THE SABLE VENUS AND OTHER POEMS by Robin Coste Lewis, copyright 2015 by Robin Coste Lewis. Published by Alfred A. Knopf.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

My Father in English

by Richard Blanco

First half of his life lived in Spanish: the long syntax
of las montañas that lined his village, the rhyme
of sol with his soul–a Cuban alma–that swayed
with las palmas, the sharp rhythm of his machete
cutting through caña, the syllables of his canarios
that sung into la brisa of the island home he left
to spell out the second half of his life in English–
the vernacular of New York City, sleet, neon, glass–
and the brick factory where he learned to polish
steel twelve hours a day. Enough to save enough
to buy a used Spanish-English dictionary he kept
bedside like a Bible–studied fifteen new words
after his prayers each night, then practiced them
on us the next day: Buenos días, indeed, my family.
Indeed más coffee. Have a good day today, indeed–
and again in the evening: Gracías to my bella wife,
indeed, for dinner. Hicistes tu homework, indeed?
La vida is indeed dificil. Indeed did indeed become
his favorite word which, like the rest of his new life,
he never quite grasped: over-used and misused often
to my embarrassment. Yet the word I most learned
to love him through: indeed, the exile who
tried to master the language to chose to master him, 
indeed, the husband who refused to say I love you
in English to my mother, the man who died without
true translation. Indeed, meaning: in fact/en efecto,
meaning: in reality/de hecho, meaning to say now
what I always meant to tell him in both languages:
thank you/gracías for surrendering the past tense
of your life so that I might conjugate myself here
in the present of this country, in truth/asi es, indeed.

from HOW TO LOVE A COUNTRY, copyright Richard Blanco 2019. Published by Beacon Press.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

Love letter

by Donika Kelly

I wake each morning.
And am disappointed in the waking.

In the evening, in the hours before sleep,
I drag canyons into my forearms, dredge

the little tributaries of mud and fish.
These pits and hollows make a mess of everything

they touch. I am feeling, spooling
away from what holds muscle to bone.

Tumbling from what holds me to the world.
O, to do away with the meat and light of me.

from BESTIARY: POEMS by Donika Kelly. Published by Graywolf Press. Copyright 2016 by Donika Kelly.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

The Swimmer

by Christina Hutchins

Underwater I became a girl
with a young man’s ripe back
the muscles curled
around definite bones

But what you saw from above–
a blue-green daemon fraught with ripple
none of my lines a line–  I was broken
shuffled     yet I moved whole

It is me again     at the far side
surfacing     my face and shoulders
reassembled     solidity of my arms established
that settled years refunded

though where I stand waist-deep in the shallows
my hips     my thighs and feet     approximate
one of Picasso’s disarticulated women–
I cannot keep my unshackled forms still

from THE STRANGER DISSOLVES by Christina Hutchins. Copyright 2011 by Christina Hutchins. Published by Sixteen Rivers Press.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

Ghost

by Frank Bidart

You must not think what I have
accomplished through you

could have been accomplished by any other means.

Each of us is to himself
indelible. I had to become that which could not

be, by time, from human memory, erased.

I had to burn my hungry, unappeasable
furious spirit

so inconsolably into you

you would without cease
write to bring me rest.

Bring us rest. Guilt is fecund. I knew

nothing I made
myself had enough steel in it to survive.

I tried: I made beautiful
paintings, beautiful poems. Fluff. Garbage.

The inextricability of love and hate?

If I had merely made you
love me you could not have saved me.

Copyright 2018 by Frank Bidart. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 22, 2018 by Academy of American Poets.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.