stilted words
stillborn
slide out
from torn
slash flesh
blood red
lipstick mouth
spews out
bloodless ugly triplets
‘I / love / you’
I choose ‘I’
not love
not you
not seeing eye to eye
but
fighting tooth for tooth
forebears cry out
they see
everything
from top
of swaying
family tree
daant ke lie daant
don’t lie Continue reading “Hir Qing Sorrow by Iain Fraser”
The sweetest thing
Sweetest thing
that could happen
this day
a real reason to cry
Its All Greek to me
For B. D. M.
“The embrace of men”
I say
and you pirouette
behind the cash register
a new found bond at work
When she speaks, the penny bomb drops,
When she decides to say #MeToo #TimesUp
When she remembers, but doesn’t voice it out loud,
When the Ace woman speaks and says ‘Don’t touch me there’,
When the Bi woman speaks and says ‘Actually I’m happily married’,
When the drag queen speaks and says ‘stop bothering me’
It isn’t a challenge, a threat to your identity,
She’s telling you her boundaries.
They are not up for negotiation,
negation, conquering, obliteration,
her body is not your inclusive space.
She doesn’t need your arrogant attempt at re-education.
When she speaks, the penny bomb drops.
I am a straight ally.
And I choose to make an oath to all that choose to hear it
I will defend the different dissonance, I will stand with
those told who to love and when to love and how to love
those told that they cannot have.
Those told that they are somehow lesser, that being gay is a joke
That being Trans* is just convenient cover for a pervert
Those told that simply being anything other than straight is not normal, Is deviant, is ‘other’
I make this oath because of the things I see
I see forty-nine threads cut short, I see the right to pee safely being ruled by fear
I see the rules of divorce still governed by straight law
I see secure employment being based on your sexual orientation
I see religion twisted into hate, I see corrective rape, I see murder
I see you, queer girl, your slip shed soul constantly bruised from unwanted advances
When a man reeking of arrogance says,
“You’ve never had a real man, bet I’ll give you a good fuck”
Continue reading “A Song From a Straight Ally by Suzanne Fraser-Martin”
I have ten minutes here,
Less than ten in this press of people, before I go through those gates
to tell you that, Berlin was beautiful, a free celebration of all love
The Self-Owners, The Island, The Girlfriend, The Schwanenberg.
Then under the strict shadow of a worded paragraph I am now a number
Scratched into my skin, my name pressed into records,
between pages and pages of names.
Before Berlin was lights and love and music, gay bars and open study
Here is mud obscuring my identity,
photographed from three angles,
in grim stripes and triangles
we become homogeneous herd, corralled into camps.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 