Poetry can be a wonderful medium to live your truth in this heteronormative world. Here are some glorious queer poets performing this cathartic form of self expression. Also check out 14 Gorgeous Poems Written And Performed By Poets Of Color and Gothic Poems: 16 Creators Embrace The Somber Side Of Art. “My straight friends tease mebecause all my best friendsare my ex loves, but a wise heart told meit’s the most tender partof queerness—how we’ve all lost so much family when we find people we call family, we’ll do almost anything to not let go.” Books by Andrea Gibson: Lord of the Butterflies, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns “look I know this poem seems disappointing so farbut just keep on listening to it, it will get goodit will get good, just keep on, give it more of a chancelisten, the poetry will happen It will happen.and if it doesn’t happenmaybe you’re just not listening to it rightmaybe you’re not listening to the poetry rightor maybe I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m being harshmaybe you had bad experience with poetry in the pastmaybe you were traumatized by it by a bush poetry nightor a haiku with the syllables all wrong and maybe that’s why you’re not enjoying this poem nowbut I promise you you will enjoy the poem.” “I am a descendant of a family of multilingual folkwho are synonymous to non-English speaking.Who sent me to English school so I could be better than themBecause speaking English in India is statusEnglish in India is ‘Look, I have a verbal Mercedes!’English in India is sucking up to the colonialistsbut forgetting they left a long time agoThe first time I dated a white guy,I would sometimes let words from my native language slip into a text out of reflex and he’d dismiss them as typos.” “Straight people make me want to be a biologist because even when I’m not in the lab, you tell me I’m experimenting.Playing with toxic chemicalsmistaking this love potion for poisonthat what my girlfriend and I share isa hypothesis instead of a result.You take my conclusions away from me and call them fiction.Straight people make me want to be a biologistbecause even when this is neither solid, liquid nor gas,you tell me it’s just a phase.That my experiences are meaningless until validated by you.You rip the weight from my actionsand make them light enough for you to carry” “The year you turned eleven Was the first time you said out loud that you didn’t want to live anymoreIn therapy you said you wouldn’t make it to 21On my 21st birthday I thought about youYou were rightAt 19 you started to fadeI tried to cross you out like a line in my memoirI wished I could erase completelyAnd maybe I’m misunderstanding the definition of deathBut even though parts of you still existYou are not hereMost of my friends have never heard your name until nowI’ve been trying to write this letter for 6 monthsI still can’t decide if it should be an apology or not” “ii.all lives don’t matterthe same as all lives some lives matteronly to themselves some lives matteronly they hood some lives matterof fact & some livesup for debate all lives matterto someone but what aboutthis life of mine? honey colored& black as it is? what my life mean to you?am i talking to you?do you wish me justiceor do you wish I would justshut up already, vanish already?” Books by Danez Smith : Don’t Call Us Dead: Poems, Homie, Black Movie “here is a list of things I like more than sexreadinglying flat on my back staring at the ceiling peeling back the skin of a grapefruitwatching the old man who lives in my backyard smoke weed ’till he becomes his lawn chair oatmealwet paintstrong coffeecheap whiskeyriding my bike away from parties how night swallows me like a dragonthe wet heat of one body aloneetc etc etc” Books by Cameron Awkward-Rich: Sympathetic Little Monster, Dispatch: Poems “Don’t you know? A mother’s love neglects pride the way fire neglects the cries of what it burns. My son, even tomorrow you will have today. Don’t you know? There are men who touch breasts as they would the tops of skulls. Men who carry dreams over mountains, the dead on their backs. But only a mother can walk with the weight of a second beating heart. Stupid boy. You can get lost in every book but you’ll never forget yourself the way god forgets his hands. When they ask you where you’re from, tell them your name was fleshed from the toothless mouth of a war-woman. That you were not born but crawled, headfirst–– into the hunger of dogs. My son, tell them the body is a blade that sharpens by cutting.”Books by Ocean Vuong: Night Sky With Exit Wounds “These are not monster, there are no monsters here, these feel like love,And when they creep inside you it’s like something once missing is finally coming home.How could a monster make such pretty girls?Pretty girlsPretty skinny girls, They look like everything that is wonderful about being aliveLike, Vodka Diet Cokesand pictures of hip bones at the beachAnd “all I’ve eaten for the past three days is my own fingernails”And these monsters (Not Monsters)can make you pretty too.” Books by Savannah Brown: Graffiti (and other poems) “I’m gay likealmostlike lipslike the closet is cracked openbut some days I have to walk myself input my best femme forwardat the job interview, the mega-bus station, my grandpa’s funeral I’m gay likeevery time I call myself gaythe men in my life take it upon themselves to saywell what about ben, what was that then?I’m gay like my only straight friend just came outShe said she would’ve known sooner if not for the folks always photoshopping her wedding picturesAnd I’m gay like my girlfriend can build heaven with her left handI’m the closest she comes to touching religion.” “I think almost everyone tries hard to do good,and just finds out too latethey should have tried softer.I’ve never in my whole life been level headed.but the older I get the more level hearted.And I think we made gods who look like us for a reason I think, in spite of it all, we trust we can be believed in.When I don’t believe in myselfI try to remember I have walked on water,like, 700 timesin Maine in the dead of winter.Where I come from you can drivea pick-up truck from one sideof the lake to the other.And people have an unusually large amount of missing teethand fingers, but you can still sell them whitening strips and wedding ringslike crazy,because where I come frombeauty is in the eye of anyone who sees what’s missing,but can’t stop pointing to what’s still there.If there is no definition for love yetI think that’s a good one.” Books by Andrea Gibson: Lord of the Butterflies, Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns
