Autopainophile

by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza

My favorite thing is slowly pulling
into my parking spot at home
just as the song I’ve been feeling
things to finally ends.

All these movie moments
and hand cutting wind in half dreams
come for me as if
sent by some light that wants
to watch me survive.

In the movies people like me
don’t survive and it’s the same
in real life so I make my own
movies in my head and I last
to the end and I am not
happy even in my own
fantasy but I am strong.

I am holding the camera and
pointing it at myself so I am
trapped in my own gaze
which is fine
which feels great
which is like the taste of my
own blood
which is great.

I wish I loved my body the
way you say I love my body and
I wish the sun would stay just
below the horizon forever.

Originally published by the PEN Poetry Series on May 12, 2016.

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

Movie

by Eileen Myles

You’re like
a little fruit
you’re like
a moon I want
to hold
I said lemon slope
about your
hip
because it’s one
of my words
about you
I whispered
in bed
this smoothing
the fruit &
then alone
with my book
but writing
in it the pages
wagging
against my knuckles
in the
light like a
sail.

from SORRY TREE, copyright 2007 by Eileen Myles. Published by Wave Books.

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

Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)

by Muriel Rukeyser

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

Muriel Rukeyser, “Poem” from The Speed of Darkness. Copyright © 1968 by Muriel Rukeyser. Source: The Speed of Darkness (Vintage Books, 1968)

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

This is Not a Small Voice

by Sonia Sanchez

This is not a small voice
you hear               this is a large
voice coming out of these cities.
This is the voice of LaTanya.
Kadesha. Shaniqua. This
is the voice of Antoine.
Darryl. Shaquille.
Running over waters
navigating the hallways
of our schools spilling out
on the corners of our cities and
no epitaphs spill out of their river mouths.

This is not a small love
you hear               this is a large
love, a passion for kissing learning
on its face.
This is a love that crowns the feet with hands
that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails
mends the children,
folds them inside our history where they
toast more than the flesh
where they suck the bones of the alphabet
and spit out closed vowels.
This is a love colored with iron and lace.
This is a love initialed Black Genius.

This is not a small voice
you hear.

From Wounded in the House of a Friend. Copyright © 1995 by Sonia Sanchez.

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

The Dreamer

by Djuna Barnes

The night comes down, in ever-darkening shapes that seem—

To grope, with eerie fingers for the window—then—

To rest to sleep, enfolding me, as in a dream

            Faith—might I awaken!

And drips the rain with seeming sad, insistent beat.

Shivering across the pane, drooping tear-wise,

And softly patters by, like little fearing feet.

            Faith—this weather!

The feathery ash is fluttered; there upon the pane,—

The dying fire casts a flickering ghostly beam,—

Then closes in the night and gently falling rain.

            Faith—what darkness!

This poem is in the public domain.

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