7.12 / Queer Three

The last time I saw Donnie, he got drunk on Lemon Lovers and I drove him to the Emerg. A drizzly, freezing-rain kind of night, and I work graveyards hauling laundry at the old base in Cornwallis-mess-hall scrubs in two kinds of marinade, big pallets of Air Cadets’ wet-dream sheets.

Translated by Aaron Crippen despairing I wandered the night in despair Little Brother come with me a thin man in white with glasses extended a sisterly hand and woke me from my loneliness and pain he took me to the Happiness Hotel took my shadow shrunken on a white bedsheet the lights tearing gray memories

Mail [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Smith1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Dear Mrs. Thompson, Sorry if you ever tasted the salt of me when you kiss your husband good morning. I hope it didn’t taint your coffee or make bloody murder of your lipstick.

These excerpts from Dick Strong have been presented as a PDF to best preserve the author’s intentions.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Tansley.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Something must have happened between then and now, here and there, because Imogen has been ignoring my smiles. It becomes clear I’ve done something wrong when she pulls my hand from the small of her back like a plug from a sink.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Swide.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] The exotic fish were dead. Death should never come before noon. That skinny red headed guy who sold exotic fish told me to be careful, feed the fish regularly. He didn’t have faith in me.

Boycott trinity [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Rooney1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Is it possible to be a man with a friend. To be a man about it. SHE licks my hand and what I give her is thusly sticky. SHE licks my hand and the whole sidewalk falls from the fervor.

he gay [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Seth1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] my tum has bage in it – a seedy kind. but it’s fine, my big slick cuz slobs all time: pretz, peppy, sweet tat fries. no, teddy, you can’t tag him, he’s my shined bargain find. true, once chewed tushy takes on pooh.

In order to preserve the author’s formatting, this piece is presented as a PDF.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Myers.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Sex Maybe he only took his dick out and the rest of him was clothed except for my mouth a receptacle trained to put the light through. Be at the beach one day for me to find you.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Mickelson.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Say you have a daughter who’s a junior in high school. Say she is head of the homecoming committee making floats. Say they decide on a float where the school mascot, the Pioneer, shoots their rivals the Wolves. Say she tells you she needs several colors of crepe.

I brand myself on the knee with the teeth of a comb To grow the hair & legs of a centauress The battering of hooves & churning of cud in my throat stuffed with the Lord like A window A blank under my treehouse weeds torn by boys & girls I dream of Spearing Thunderbolt

for Travis Casey You were the book I had opened. All the birds in the aviary died trying to escape, to soar back to you. I tied a message to a pigeon’s leg with orange ribbon. I hate that color, how it reminds me of sunsets, fruit and other things Mama insists I enjoy.

your used jeep is the first thing we ride in. tunneling your town, two girls, july air coming through windows. your system loud as it could go. rattling truck doors. gnats determined to escape summer, catch our mouths during laughs. styrofoam cups of lemonade flung out open windows come back to kiss our cheeks.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Jacobs.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Don’t worry, it’s just gender dysphoria again.

HUMPADORI JACK SING-ALONG [wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Vidhu1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Kindly do not forsake this world of jack, this world, our steady candy in which we don’t do jack.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Hoke.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] What if Tom and Huck Fucked? Someone has spray-painted “What if Tom and Huck fucked’ on the wall of school. Tom thinks they wrote it to drive Tom and Huck apart. Huck hopes Tom wrote it because that would be amazing.

Here’s how I remember it:  I must have been God knows how old, maybe six or seven, which is funny because I thought of myself as pretty old at the time.  My best friend Jason was visiting from Wisconsin and I wanted him to meet my other best friend Frankie.

Their madness really did, at least, have the most perfect ears. Ruth Ann and Ira remarked on this phenomenon often, at first.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Falak.

The boy who will later be a polo player wants me baffled and vertical, utterly in the hallway, monkey-sudden on a jungle gym. This is deviation: I had no designs on altitude, knees flush to the acrylic; all that yellow was more light than I can speak against.

in memoriam, J.G. Ballard During these submission fantasies   Rupert Murdoch and the shelf-life of the grotesque.  Studies indicate the public’s identification and disgust with Murdoch, as referenced in privately arranged focus groups on behalf of News International.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Cohen.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] When she fucked me we imagined we were fucking other people, like Jane, for example, from our chemistry class, with the soft round calves and the horn-rimmed glasses, with the thin ankles and trembling hands.

poemsNpaint 19 / F / Gay / Single Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada Last Online: a month ago. Ethnicity: Klutz and screwball poet. Height: 5’7′, a plausible lie. Body Type: A nomnom hoarder. Diet: It’s odd, the way animals taste. Smokes: No way. It’s a metaphor for cancer. Drinks: Coffee, Chai tea, and your hair.

It began as pushing.  Pushing each other.  In that small room, his room.  So many black faces staring at me, faces from magazines, pages torn and taped to the walls.  Prince.  Michael Jackson.  Mary J. Blige.   I admit that I pushed him first.   It was snowing outside.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/7_12/Blackchurch.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] He’s passed out four times so far. I had a go at him for not sleeping well the night before, not eating properly. He answered with narrow eyes. Had a performance to do.