Separation, Parts

by Dani Janae

for Sarah

I’LL NAME MY DAUGHTER ZARA—
an ode to you as force going
vastly in every direction.
I speak to become a child
in the early stages
of recognizing her own voice:

teach me how to braid my hair.
Teach me how a name hangs on
like a gummy tooth. Descent.
All these years of my life.

I want you to hold me
so that I don’t burst
— a collapsing star.

          descent cloaking itself
           in the same dark
           as departure.

I don’t want to grow old
never knowing how you
called me. Teach me how
a name fissures
and fractures
like a gummy tooth.

My primitive devotion turns
tongue into bedrock, and I try
to conjure you from the well
of my chest. I discovered
my own hands too late to never
let you go; both of us now lying
in the absence between
longing and belonging.

You were an isle, then you weren’t.

Oh, to be yours
for one second.

The ecosystem
of the mouth tells everything.

I ask the hollow ground about being born
and she tells me it’s too great, too heavy.

Source: Slush Pile Magazine, Issue 23.

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

Explorer

by Kazim Ali

I fear dispersal but the resounding really sounds may be full of echo
or echolocation for the next round

Eye rowed in the guest book of God my many sacred tongues
body and bow

Fingers spell now all the spaces I open
You now verse now open oh pen

Cacti quiver for a century
In the desert I swam myself earthword to know

No time on earth and no breath no dearth
Hollowed out into architecture eternal

Who argues with rhyme or snow
Who knows the space in your here

The space in the storm so finely bowed
The space in snow no one nears

Originally published in Poetry (March 2019)

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

The Gunman

by Steven Sanchez

Imagine:

                              the four chambers of my heart

                                                                           each loaded with a bullet,

                              each beat another revolution

                                                            in my chest,

my throat

                              a barrel,

                                                            my curled tongue

                                                                                                         a trigger.

                                                            I believe

                                                                           in spirits,

in every fag

                              and queer

                                                            I’ve heard

                                                                           and allowed

                                                                                                         to pass through my body

                                                            and into the next.

I believe

                              in possession,

                                                            believe each metal slug

                              entering our bodies

                                                                                          tonight is a history

                              we can’t escape,

                                                                                          forged in factories

                              across this country

                                                                                          by men

                                                            who feel threatened

                                                                                                                        by love.

And when I stare

                                                            into my reflection

                                                                                          one last time tonight,

                              I know each pupil

will become an exit

                                                                                          wound.

                                                                                                                        I’ve spent my life

                              learning to lie

                                                            to myself,

                                                                                          but tonight

the truth

                              will enter my body,

                                                            will hurt,

                                                                                          will kill,

                                                                                                                        will leave

an echo.

Originally published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, August 3, 2016

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

My Voice

by Oscar Wilde

Within the restless, hurried, modern world
    We took our hearts’ full pleasure—You and I,
And now the white sails of our ships are furled,
    And spent the lading of our argosy

Wherefore my cheeks before their time are wan,
    For very weeping is my gladness fled,
Sorrow hath paled my lip’s vermilion
    And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.

But all this crowded life has been to thee
    No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
    That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.

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

Never to Dream of Spiders

by Audre Lorde

Time collapses between the lips of strangers
my days collapse into a hollow tube
soon implodes against now
like an iron wall
my eyes are blocked with rubble
a smear of perspectives
blurring each horizon
in the breathless precision of silence
one word is made.

Once the renegade flesh was gone
fall air lay against my face
sharp and blue as a needle
but the rain fell through October
and death lay    a condemnation
within my blood.

The smell of your neck in August
a fine gold wire bejeweling war
all the rest lies
illusive as a farmhouse
on the other side of a valley
vanishing in the afternoon.

Day three    day four    day ten
the seventh step
a veiled door leading to my golden anniversary
flameproofed free-paper shredded
in the teeth of a pillaging dog
never to dream of spiders
and when they turned the hoses upon me
a burst of light.

Audre Lorde, “Never to Dream of Spiders”
The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde
Copyright © 1997 by Audre Lorde.

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