#Queer Poet of Color

[mole-lesbian]

That I can be with you, you, all of you, and if life repeated a thousand times, still you, and again, you.

On Loving by Forugh Farrokhzad, translated by Sholeh Wolpé

[byronicist]

"I came into this world already scarred by loss on both sides of my family. My Indigenous side; my European side. My father and my mother were the kind of damaged people who should never have had children. But of course, they had me, and so my first language was loss."

Deborah Miranda, When Coyote Knocks on the Door (2021)

[diariodoxel]

El escándalo de la temporada.

En un escenario suspendido entre lo onírico y lo quebradizo, una figura etérea danza sin moverse. Su piel, traslúcida como pétalo herido, deja ver los huesos del alma, y su corsé abierto revela la fragilidad de un corazón floreciendo. Porta una máscara de cuernos suaves, como si la bestia que habita en ella también supiera llorar.

Guirnaldas colgantes —ecos de una fiesta antigua— cruzan el fondo, mientras luces apagadas titilan en silencio, testigos de un espectáculo interior. La tinta china define los contornos de su dolor elegante, y la acuarela sangra en cada trazo como si el papel mismo recordara haber amado.

Debajo de ella, brotan flores carmesí con raíces de deseo y tallos de resiliencia, como si la vida insistiera en crecer, aún entre ruinas de papel y piel. Una mariposa tímida se posa entre sus heridas, susurrando: hay belleza en lo roto.

Obra de @diariodoxel —donde el trazo y el alma se funden, donde el arte florece en la grieta.

[ismybloodholyenough]

[futchbookslut]

Hiding in the doorways between her grief and mine, I apply her foundation to my face. I conceal the parts of me she conceals, puckering my lips as if to kiss a man that loves me the way I want to be loved.

[...]

No child in our family stays a child their mother can love.

Paul Tran, "Elegy with My Mother's Lipstick"

[anonamelie]

Honey: “Oh! I see you’ve met Siren!”

Siren: (chirps)

Rome: (terrified) “That’s…That’s a dragon.”

Honey: (confused) “I know. I told you about her when we met.”

Rome: “I thought she was a cat! Not a dragon! Why didn’t you warn me about the dragons?!”

[foxandcatlibrary]

63rd Book I Read in 2023

Title: Queer Poets of Color

Author: Nepantla Anthology

Notes: Beautiful collection of a lot of very different kinds of poetry from a lot of different poets.

[candy-colored-misery]

you're like the rays of light

streaming down into the ocean blue

piercing the cold with radiance,

and your eyes, too,

I feel them pierce me the same

[seasskulls]

today she traced the crevices of my palms with black pen.

it was the most liberating pain i’ve ever felt

the most pleasurable restriction.

she drew my fingerprints as spirals and i could feel my heart start circulating and my brain stop.

my hand looked like a cartoon

and i realized i’ve never felt real in my life

even now with her, nothing was real

the only real feeling was the self disgust at the fact that i couldn’t replicate the same tracings on her palms

even if i drew the same way she did it wouldn’t be the same

because she had already traced her own left hand, and i knew i would never be right for her

her left hand even had the remains of her polydactyly traced and it looked like a fermata which made me only think about how long i wanted to hold her

her mother always nags her for drawing on her skin because she thinks that the toxins will leak into her bloodstream and slowly kill her

i wouldn’t mind though for either of us

if that’s how i leave this life at least i live on as a permanent bored doodle on my palms

that’s all i am

today she traced the crevices of my palms with black pen

today i was silently established as a permanent state of being: never hers.

that’s all i am and the restriction is still pleasurable but in the way that barbed wire around your neck manages to scratch the itch you had while it slices your throat and exposes your toxin-filled blood to the air leaving you to rub it off with your pen-coated palms

the ink and blood will wash off my hands but still leave the trace of my permanence

never hers

that’s all i am

soon the permanence will die, and i will no longer be marked as never hers.

but i have to be marked that way if it means i keep any connection with her

soon the permanence will die, and i can only beg to go with it

before it’s too late

too late for her

that’s all i am

[mudaship39]

The cut and censored version of my spoken word poetry anthology book It’s a spoken word poetry anthology book about being an Asian native a disabled native a queer trans third gender native of color and a displaced disconnected diaspora Was linked in my twitter Before I deleted it cuz of musks actions Will post the new one to tumblr bluesky and threads Lmk if anyone is interested in reading it The uncut and uncensored version is on a google doc Need email for link

[byronicist]

"Sometimes you lose something so big, so immeasurable, that bearing your grief requires an act just as complicated and unfathomable as that loss."

Deborah Miranda, When Coyote Knocks on the Door (2021)

[makingqueerhistory]

I'm from the USA and am trying to take hope and inspiration from our queer predecessors who faced dark times in the past. How did they keep going even when it felt like the world was ending?Do you have any recommendations for queer historical essays, poems, books, anything to find comfort and hope for these dark times?

Yes, I have a couple of stories for this.

Claude Cahun

A queer surrealist photographer from 1920's paris, Claude was Jewish and recognized the rise of antisemitism in their home country and watched it become fascism. Here is a quote from their article:

"In 1937 Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore cut off many connections because of the war and ran to Jersey to avoid anti-Semitic violence. Upon arrival, they went back to using their birth names and laid low until the Germans took Jersey. Moore and Cahun set to work. They used their experience with art and disguising their genders to create works that spread misinformation, seeds of rebellion and implied that there was a large-scale resistance happening when in reality, it was just the two of them. Though some of their work was based on confusing the soldiers, they also translated and transcribed BBC transmissions into German, detailing the war crimes that were being committed. They would have these translations on pieces of paper that they would slip into soldier's pockets, matchboxes, and anywhere a soldier may stumble across it and possibly read it. An investigation was started, and Nazi authorities believed there to be a group of people doing this. When the two were discovered to be behind the actions, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore were sentenced to death. Fortunately, the sentence was never carried out because the island of Jersey was liberated from German rule only a year later. Claude took a picture upon their release in front of the camps with a Nazi eagle pin between their teeth."

And Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz

who wrote:

"Poetry readings and concert attendance—and often a chat over vodka—were not only forms

of escapism, but also a search for better, more substantive aspects of human beings, a search

which would end, more often than not, in complete disillusionment. If it could be possible, to

discern, in these notes even if only for a moment a measure of humanity in that time of

inhumanity, the goal of this publication would be fulfilled.”

I think his whole article is worth reading.

Also here are some books to read:

Your Art Will Save Your Life

Beth Pickens

Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies

Ben MacIntyre

Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color

Christopher Soto

The New Queer Conscience

Adam Eli

(Some of the links are affiliate links)

[mered1h]

treadmill jaws.

TW: suicidal ideation (metaphorical), gory imagery, crude language

-

You should dig through  My cuts Stained a shiny pink  Like you took your favorite  Lipstick   All over my legs  To remind my body  That im never over, that Im a treadmill jaw  Chewing everybody up  To a stale gum wall  I want you to wash me clean  Cause everybody in this town is  So fuckin mean  Put your fingers all over me  Till i feel like a man  Cause ill lip sync all my words and still be man enough  Im quiet with a punk scene in my brain, so,  Tell me that im tough  While you stick laundry detergent  In my guts  Tell me that im a treadmill jaw; My tongue is so fast moving  And brushburn inducing  A veldt of carpet-taste-buds Its like my lips pucker up to say too much  And say nothing at all  In a dream-scene, my tongue is an underwater-kind-of-silence.     Am i a modern disease or a bubonic plague?  I'm not a narcissist,  Im a fraud               Im not a baby,  Im a god.                                          And cause i know ill lose it all     To the drugs in my head, to my dopamine and  Pudding slimed brain;  A wet sound that hits the pavement  With ideas and  Rebellion                                                                                                 So ill shove these bullet casings                  In my ribs like a sower’s seed  I’ll water it with lethargic blue soap and                                         Sprout quaking aspens; push em’  Right through the skin  Ill be naked  And show off my cuts  Ill be a kid  With skateboard scabs  ill cut off the fat around my hips  In little chicken strips  And my tongue is too loud; churns  out words that cant be heard   But god, i cant stop my fire  Ill shove it in my treadmill jaw Cook it in all my acid  And i wont be a liar, ill really make it silent.  And because i am a poet  Ill serve it for dinner and eat it again  At a big table  The girl ive kissed will watch me eat  With blood in her teeth  So that i know im not the only one with canines  That bleed  pork rines  And girl-parts  Im still naked  my hip dips are raw  And this silent dinner  Chips my tooth on silver forks  And fetus personalities  Shimmering in my stomach  All these calories speak the language of  My red blood and blue veins  Cause now i know what ill eat next My fondant tongue  With poprock taper  My treadmill mouth  And quaking aspen cuts                  Had me  headless in my mulititude of attitudes  Stuck in your teeth  These dogs from hell dont eat flesh or floss sticks  Just menthol cigarettes and  Kitchen knife knicks  I told you I was shaving  My baby hairs at the wrong angle  If they where longer I could make  Them tangle  And because I am a liar I never really stopped  I just picked my hair right out the drain and shoved it in your face  I hold myself like a loose cannon Like mace   And half dried toothpaste  Uncomfortably,  In Absolute,  Comfortably,  In an alopecic  Solute  But things grow back- they always do- because Swiss Army knives  Are infants that you blame on the things that you do   ______     _______    ______     _____________                                           _______    _____                    _________    ____    ___________ ______                              _______      ____                                  _____   __________                  _________              _____                 _______________   ______ (treadmillmouth) I keep a gun in my bed  Cause sometimes i wake up  And my veins are stuck in my teeth  So sometimes i know that i’ll need  To shoot my tongue  To keep my anatomy quiet  And then sometimes  I just shoot my brain cause  Maybe I’m just fucking insane  I keep a gun in my bed  To shoot all the words that ive said  That get me high  Without the mary jane  On my pain  Im not a baby,  Im a god  I’m not a poet, I cant even talk,   I’m a fraud. -Meredith. I am only afraid of nothing in everything.  hi, this is my first post on tumblr so tell me if you like it; thoughts and tips, yk?

[futchbookslut]

So close! It'll probably take me like an hour at most, but I have to finish it tonight. I want to make sure that I have enough time to go back through and record all the poems I loved/poets I want to explore further.

One of my goals for the new year is to read at least two typical length poetry collections each month and slowly work my way through Troubling the Line (it's around 800 pages).

[ID: A screenshot of the poetry collection Nepantla: an Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color on Libby. The loan says "time is running out. Expiring soon. Place a hold?" It is due in 1 day and is currently 74% complete. End ID]

[luxiomahariel]

Strange little vent of mine on the topic of Achillean discourse and vitriol I've seen lately towards gay trans men and transmasculine people's connection with Achilles and similar Classical figures:

It pisses me off when people say that the Sapphic label is valid because of lesbian connection to Sappho but gay men's connections to classics are problematic and copying lesbians, because it discredits a long, vivid history of gay men in literature using Classical figures to connect to our sexualities. Before gay was even used as a term, homosexual men referred to themselves as Uranians, a reference to Aphrodite Uranos in the Symposium. Many queer male authors would use specific Classical figures in their writing as a sort of flagging and/or queercoding (Wilde comes to mind, but a lot of other Uranian poets did similar). To say that contemporary queer men are wrong for feeling a connection to homosexuality in antiquity is to deny centuries worth of gay authors their main connection between themselves and historical queerness.

Similarly, to compare modern trans men and transmasculine people's interest in Classics to conservative, misogynistic, white supremacist cis men with reductive beliefs about ancient cultures inherently discredits all of the classicists who are people of color or women. Classical studies is a genuine area of research and it's incredibly insulting to so many minority classicists to imply that EVERYONE with a fascination towards Ancient Greece and Rome wants to use that knowledge to oppress minorities. It feels insulting towards so many of my peers and professors in my area of study to imply that any interest in Classics is some sort of tell of conservatism. It's openly hateful to deny certain people a connection to queer history and allow it for others.

^

[belovedbluv]

“In 1926, 19-year-old poet and artist, Richard Bruce Nugent, penned the first positive depiction of same-sex desire in American letters, “Smoke, Lilies and Jade” in Fire. Nugent arrived in New York in August 1925 with poet, Langston Hughes after meeting him in DC. A year later with Hughes and Wallace Thurman, Aaron Douglas, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Bennett, and John P. Davis would come together to make “Fire.” Hughes said the publication was made “to burn up a lot of the old, dead conventional Negro-white ideas of the past”Nugent unlike his peers was always open about his sexuality. The inspiration for Smoke, Lilies and Jade came from the time when Nugent lived in the Greenwich Village. He worked at Martha Washington Hotel in The Village and fell in love with kitchen worker Juan José Viana. Juan would be the inspiration for the character “Beauty” in “Smoke.” At the time of its published it didn’t received a lot of notoriety, it was either ignored or overlooked.

Langston Hughes stated “None of the older Negro intellectuals would have anything to do with Fire!!. Dr. Du Bois in The Crisis roasted it. The Negro press called it all sorts of bad names, largely because of a green and purple story by Bruce Nugent, in the Oscar Wilde tradition, which we had included.” Nugent remembers Dubois asking “Did you have to write about homosexuality? Couldn’t you write about colored people? Who cares about homosexuality?.” Nugent responded “You’d be surprised how good homosexuality is. I love it.” There was only one issue of “Fire” published, sadly most of them them were burned in fire of the offices of “ Fire.” Nugent was actually the reason there are any copies still available after still connecting with other queer black people through out his life.

1: Aaron Douglas for the cover of “Fire”, 1926

2: Richard Bruce Nugent illustration “Dancing Figures”, 1935

3: Richard Bruce Nugent photographed by Carl Van Vechten, February 16, 1936

4-9: passages from “Smoke, Lilies, and Jade”