Say It Loud! Poetry Anthology Zine

SEPTEMBER 2025
say
it
loud!
AN ANTHOLOGY OF QUEER POETICS,
PROTEST, AND POWER

ARTISTIC CO-CHAIRS
Logen Cure is a queer poet and educator. She
curates Inner Moonlight, the monthly reading
series and podcast at The Wild Detectives in
Dallas. She earned her MFA in Creative
Writing from the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro. Her debut full-length
poetry collection, Welcome to Midland (Deep
Vellum Publishing 2021), was shortlisted for
the Reading the West Book Awards. Learn
more at www.logencure.com.
LyriK Hunter is a Dallas-based poetic
expressive artist, originally from Midland, TX.
She's a passionate poet, singer, speaker,
actress, teaching artist, mentor and
entrepreneur. She’s graced stages like The
Black Academy of Arts & Letters, F.L.O.W.
International (Brazil), and many other national
and local stages. LyriK is former CEO of the
award-winning Brown Sugah Lounge, and a
very passionate community advocate, who
strives daily to provide safe spaces for the
community to gather and be heard, using her
#PoetiKHealingMovement brand to promote
healing and mental wellness through writing,
poetry and the arts. Lyrik's projects and
creative works can be streamed, downloaded
and purchased online and in person, including
her debut EP #MuziKNPoetry Vol 1 and her
book, Love N Life Thru The Eyes of LyriK Vol 1.
Local community bookings are available via
Dallas CAP (Community Artist Program) ...
learn more at: https://linktr.ee/lyrik_hunter
BADGEOFPRIDE.ORG

MEET THE ARTISTS
Blaq Bailey is a spoken word poet. Her work fuses lyrical
storytelling with rhythm, rooted in Black culture, ancestral
memory, and emotional truth. She uses poetry as a tool for
healing, liberation, and cultural reclamation.
Claudia Hullett, artistically known as CLOUDGoddess the
Poet is a native to Dallas and has written and performed her
poetry since 2019. Although poetry is her primary vehicle of
expression, she also is an experienced director, mover, vocalist
and savant.
C.R.U.S.H YourPoet (Creating. Realities. Using. Spiritual.
Hands) is a nationally ranked, internationally performed spoken
word artist who has cultivated safe spaces for queer creatives,
most notably through FluidFridays, Texas’ largest and longestrunning
queer open mic. She has collaborated with organizations
including Dallas Poetry Slam, Arttitude, Writer’s Garret, Dallas
Black Queer Collective, and CinéWilde, and has been featured in
The Dallas Morning News and Dallas Voyage. Always seeking
aligned collaborations, she uses her platform to foster growth,
connection, and visibility within the LGBTQ+ community.
James Davis is the author of the poetry collection Club Q,
which won the Anthony Hecht Prize. His writing has been
featured on NBC News and CBC Radio and supported by the
Sewanee Writers' Conference, The Mastheads, Sundress
Academy for the Arts, and other literary arts organizations. His
poems and essays have appeared in The Sewanee Review, The Gay
and Lesbian Review, DIAGRAM, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Best New
Poets, and elsewhere. He serves as Senior Poetry Editor at
Narrative Magazine and teaches English at the University of
North Texas.
4

Delaney is a femme lesbian, a poet, and a hyperbolist in that
order. She has been writing for over 10 years and believes that
poetry is the best way to translate seemingly nonsensical
emotions and experiences into something cathartic. She posts on
Instagram her (semi-regular) series "Poetry and a Look," which
combines her artistic loves of makeup and poetry.
Aaron Glover is the Executive Director of The Writer’s Garret.
He co-created Words For A Resonant Space with Pegasus
Contemporary Ballet and founded the Dallas Is Lit! festival,
featuring the multilingual performance Hear Me, See Me. A poet,
director, and performer, his work has appeared in Sixfold, Thimble
Literary Magazine, Virginia Quarterly Review, Mad Swirl, Illya’s Honey,
Red River Review, and more. His chapbook Bio Logic (2017) was
published by INF Press. Glover holds an MFA from the
University of Houston and a BFA from Wichita State University.
Kepler Goodwin is a queer North Texas poet who enjoys
spending time with friends, their dog, and deep introspective
pauses that occasionally lead to poems. They have one published
poem with Eber and Wein, and are so excited to be a part of this
project.
Guru is a multidisciplinary artist whose work lives at the
intersection of poetry, music, and lived experience. Blending
sensuality with spiritual insight, his spoken word explores
identity, intimacy, grief, joy, and transformation. For Guru,
performance is both ritual and release—an invitation to feel
deeply, heal loudly, and live unapologetically. His work is rooted
in the belief that vulnerability is power, and that truth-telling can
be both mirror and bridge.
Arthur Maruyama is a Japanese-American poet from Seattle,
currently landed in North Texas. He is a volunteer
conservationist and lover of science fiction. He is determined to
land a backflip in the near future. Many such themes appear in
his work.
BADGEOFPRIDE.ORG

MEET THE ARTISTS
Emmy Piercy has been performing poetry within the Dallas
literary community since 2016, where she has contributed to
collaborative projects including White Rock Zine Machine and
the Dallas Museum of Art's Center for Creative Connection.
Her work has appeared in Thimble and Impossible Archetype. She is
a graduate student of English at the University of Texas at
Arlington, where she studies the intersection of ecology and the
written word. This year, she married her best friend.
Mz. Trill is a Dallas-based spoken word artist, writer, creative
director, and co-founder of She Go Hard Entertainment. Born
in Baton Rouge and raised in Buffalo, she first found her voice
through underground rap before rediscovering it in spoken word
after life’s twists led her back to the stage. Known for her
unapologetic transparency and vivid, intentional storytelling, she
creates from real-life experience—where lyricism and emotion
collide—delivering performances that electrify audiences
nationwide with authenticity, passion, and creativity.
Jennifer Elise Wang (they/she) is a nonbinary femme in STEM
and punk rock pretty boi poet from Dallas, Texas. When they’re
not in the lab or writing, they enjoy action sports, cosplay,
dancing, and volunteering at the animal shelter. They have been
published in FERAL, just femme & dandy, Exposed Brick Literary
Magazine, Penumbric, and Bethlehem Writers Roundtable and featured
in Inner Moonlight, Phynnecabulary, and Cobalt Poets.
6
BADGEOFPRIDE.ORG

POEMS
LOGEN CURE...........DEAR KAY LAHUSEN..............8
LYRIK HUNTER....RAINBOW LOUNGE HATRED: DEFEATED....9
BLAQ BAILEY..............RITA HESTER..............10
CLOUDGODDESS THE POET........MISSING VOICES.......11
C.R.U.S.H..........QUEEN OF THE GRAND-RAG.........16
JAMES DAVIS.............RECOGNITION...............17
DELANEY....I’M NOT SHOPPING FOR CEMETARY PLOTS....18
AARON GLOVER..WHAT I WOULD SAY TO LITTLE OSCAR WILDE..19
KEPLER GOODWIN.............PLEASE NOTE............20
GURU.................PROVE IT ON ME...............21
ARTHUR MARUYAMA............THE QUILTER............22
EMMY PIERCY.............TWO WEDDINGS..............24
MZ. TRILL.................NO H8...................25
JENNIFER ELISE WANG............HOME RUN...........26
ZINE DESIGN: ADRIAN J. CARDWELL | CARDWELL IMPACT MEDIA, ©2025

AND THE CATEGORY IS: "BOLD"
RAINBOW LOUNGE HATRED:
DEFEATED -LyriK Hunter
WELCOME TO THE RAINBOW LOUNGE, where you
have permission to shine, live & love OUT LOUD AND
PROUD! So let me see you, Vogue it out, twerk it out,
sing it out and scream it out! Because here at "The
Rainbow Lounge", see, we definitely be doing and doing
it and doing it well...
...well the crazy sh*t is, it still went dark ... no warnings, no heads up, it was a calculated
move!
They thought they were safe..
had learned to make the best of the moments they had to be free. FREE, to enjoy life
without judgment or condemnation, but instead, the ones they trusted to protect them,
came self-adorned and ready to play God, handing out sentences before a citation,
conviction or booking could even have been recorded.
They had years of practice, truthfully! Hating the ones they didn't like and MASKING it
as duty!
Lies already on their tongues before the damage they had planned was even done. They
just knew they'd get away with it, because why should this time be any different.
And as History repeats itself in more ways than one, they ripped the masks off their
faces showing their true colors in spaces they have always been afraid of ....As if
destroying the people bold enough to live in their truth would somehow make their evil
souls more digestible for you!
And for me, it's just another reminder, yet again, that being black, being a woman, and
being gay, it's a very heavy load to carry, especially when the people that hate you, know
they can get rid of you and still get away with it!
It's a repeated message, one that deserves to be heard in unison! A moment of silence
and recognition ... a call to wake up and smell the guilt in their bones .... a bat signal
across the lands calling us all to stand up for what's right.
Hatred sits in the belly of the beast, but BEASTS, they, too, can always be defeated!!
AND THE SPIRIT & STRENGTH OF THE RAINBOW LOUNGE WILL
LIVE ON TODAY, TOMORROW, AND 4EVER MORE...
AND THE CATEGORY IS: LIVE LOUD, BE PROUD, BE YOU!

10
RITA
BLAQ BAILEY
HESTER
The glass doesn’t lie
It shows her
As a woman
She always knew was hiding in her bones
The girl
She carved free with trembling hands
And endless nights of prayers
But the world…
The world still squints at her
Calls her an illusion
Calls her “sir” in checkout lines
Cause they do not see her
They see a transition
Love once brushed her cheek
Soft as sunlight
And she thought finally
But his hand turned into a fist
And her name became a joke
Slurred between broken teeth and swollen lips
Another whispered she was perfect
But only in the dark
Only behind doors that’s locked
Where no one could see him
Wanting her
She
Has been both
Goddess and ghost
Worshiped and erased
Kissed like a secret
And left like a crime scene
And yet
Here in the mirror
She can touch her face
The woman she fought to become
Her eyes hold the weight
Of every bruise
Every betrayal
Every time
Love promised to stay
But never did
And maybe one day
Someone will see her reflection
And not look away
See her place here
Is place that she can stay
And not be subjected to abuse
To feel love
And made to make changes
To be someone else’s home
And safe place
All while
He breaks holes in her walls and windows
Cause he battles with his own desires
So many lives expire
Trying to be loved
And Rita
Rita Hester was one of those
They tried to chalk her name into silence
But the name
In which she came
It’s carved into protest signs
Etched into concrete where blood once dried
Alive
In every trans soul
Who refuses to fold
They only showed you murdered
As if the only headline we deserve
Is a tombstone
We lit candles
Until the streets glowed
Turned grief into gospel
Pain into protest
Your name
Your name into a movement
You are the spark behind remembrance
You are the face behind resistance
All the ones they tried to erase
This is not just a memorial
This is war paint
This is survival
Of being oneself
We are all Rita Hester
Trying not to lose another
Lost face.

CLOUDGoddess The Poet
missing voices
Vanish like:
This one is for the boys click clacking on bedroom floors in momma or sister's heels
Feeling the thrills on lipstick on face, tucked hair behind ears and falling in love at first sight
with the femininity as it appears in the mirror
Seeing themselves clearer
This one is for the girls who live for a tailored suit, think like a man and act like one too
This is one for those whose spirits don't live in the binary
The fairies, the furries, the exiled and condemned
When a disco ball spins in an empty room
The lights still dance
Just like we do
when snow touches warm ground
It's vanished
Like the sound of tree when it touches the forest floor
But with no one there to hear
Was it ever here
Did it really snow
Was I ever here did I ever really know
life
beyond the Closet
The Closet, it feels like my safe space
There I can disappear without trace
Without a word
The Closet, it shelters my unhoused thoughts
My slippery stanzas, the ones I write when my immune system is literally falling apart
The Closet, it seems to be the only one to hear me
It's searing, the loneliness
In a full room, I am invisible
Dishonorably discharged, voice missing in action
T sells T cells by the bedshore
Seamist on IV
Doll face butched up sissy, femboy bear, otter stem tomboi girlie stonewall verse
They knew themselves too early
Seen as unworthy
Disturbing
How we attack the foreign, damn the different, silence our softness
& Vanquish the voice who be slick with S's
Take T to tell their truth in the tone that is true to them
This isn't new to them
To us, missing voices varnish the walls of the closet
Wallpaper over paint over blood, sweat and tears and fears
This one is for the folx feinding for love without conditions
The ones who didn't make it past their closet door
The ones who didn't make the headlines
The ones went MIA on Fire Island, South Sudan...expunged and excommunicated from
their family plans
The ones too snowflake and not enough ground
Crazy how the missing voices become so loud
Like the sound of a tree when it touches the forest floor
Missing voices
This one's for them

Marsha P. Johnson
NO PRIDE FOR
SOME OF US
without
liberation for
all of us

C.R.U.S.H.
Queen of the GranD-Rag: An Ode to William Dorsey Swann
Take your mask off before you enter this masquerade ball!
We are no longer slaves in the field,
we are a prelude.
Satin dressed stories laying the mortar for the brick that was Stonewall.
Forever caught in a storm but always finding a way to bend light through raindrops
and disperse rainbows with every death drop.
Mask off! You have been hiding in plain sight long enough.
BE FREE.
Before ballroom had a ballroom,
Washington D.C. had William Dorsey Swann.
A black man born into slavery,
who became known for organizing the first drag balls in U.S. history,
laying the foundation for freedom marches and broken barriers everywhere.
Stitching legacy into family by blood and by love.
Even when Swann felt he fought enough,
his brothers took his patchwork and continued to quilt
antagonism into activism.
Swann took 2nd hand clothing and created the Grand Rag.
No fine fabrics at his fingertips,
but black queer folks know how to walk rags into rich statement pieces.
We be loud,
as a revolt against being silenced in our own skin.
Still fighting to be comfortable without our masks,
but nothing can stop us from dancing.
“The House of Swann: Where Slaves Became Queens”.¹
Let’s go to the Grand Rag and Drag.
It’s right down that D.C. road,
just a cakewalk away.
The cakewalk,
originated in slave communities as a subtle comical mockery
of the stiff formal nature of their slave owners’ dances.
Then kicked, twisted and turned its way into the evolution of vogue.
Captivity to choreography.
There are stories in this house.
Some of which involved law enforcement
lighting sirens instead of candles at Swann’s 30th birthday party.
Ripping gowns like ignored constitutional amendments.
Putting shackles on these black men again.
Forcing them to find home in the modern day slavery of prison cells.
Can’t no bars hold you queen!
But the GranD-Rag balls, that’s where you are seen.
I mean how many ways can you get FREE?!
From slavery, to prison cells, to societal gender norms.
You can break your way into redesignating Swann St,
formerly named for a slave owning politician of the same last name.
The irony.
The name Swann is now revolution on a street,
with houses that resemble bent light refracting into the colors of nuanced freedom.
A recognition of your legacy,
of your contributions and sacrifices,
for our community to walk, dance, strut and tut down any street,
with a Badge of Pride.
16
¹The House of Swann: Where Slaves Became Queens is a book written by Channing Joseph.

I see you, Harvey B. Milk,
smirking from your twenty-first year,
coiffed and aquiline and gorgeous,
unmistakable even in black and white
on the foxed recto page of a yearbook
under museum glass, and there is no doubt
in my mind you see me, too. You look in that lens
through a millennium and your own death
to a future where you are an icon
and I am an acolyte and you can teach me
how to feel. So, tell me, Harvey B. Milk,
what is this hurt when I look into your eyes
and expect an answer? Where am I aching toward?
Things are worse than ever for us, Harvey—
I want you to say you know this. No, I want you
to say I’m wrong. No, I want you to say I don’t have time
for you, for this, for any of this pissant imagining,
and that’s what hurts the most, Harvey B.,
how insufferably stressed out I am, how I must squeeze
my love for you between seventeen open tabs
and you know exactly what the f*ck I’m talking about,
don’t you, how little time we are allowed
for our real work and how hard we fight to make it
against what grinds away the sharp, exquisite edges
we homosexuals are endowed with by God
and His negatives. I want you so badly
to unburden me, I can barely move a muscle.
I am so viscerally disgusted to see your name
crucified on a street sign, the official afterlife
of slaughtered minorities of consequence,
the asphalt we drive and paint over, and yes,
I bet you knew a few poets in your day
and felt a certain way about the aesthetics of our rage,
but I bet you loved a few, too, and understood
the deal we’ve made with the truth. You’re a man
who knows beauty is rhetorical. A man’s man,
says your classmate, and isn’t it funny how that phrase
can mean such different things to different people,
how one man’s-man loves and another man’s-man
kills love? I want so badly to be every man’s man
I turn myself into knots. I twist and twist and twist
from the inside out, which I bet you’d remind me
is a kind of work. I want to be useful for you,
Harvey Milk. So remind me. Remind me how
to catch another’s falling
with this net I’ve made.
recognition
James Davis

18
“I’M NOT SHOPPING FOR CEMETERY PLOTS”
-For Tryfan-
A DEEP BREATH IN
THAT TURNS INTO
A LAUGH,
A SIGH,
THEN A SOB.
THE SHUDDER OF TEARS
FOR A STRUGGLE YEARS
BEFORE ME
AND YEARS AFTER ME.
A STRUGGLE WITHIN ME.
A STRUGGLE TO
PLACE YOURSELF
BEFORE SOMEONE,
VULNERABLE,
AND SICKLY,
AND WEAK,
AND ASKING THEM
TO LOVE YOU ANYWAYS
DESPITE THE CACOPHONOUS
PEARL-CLUTCHING WAILS.
DESPITE IMMORAL LAWS,
AND LIES, ON LIES, ON LIES.
TO SAY:
“I’M SICK AND I’M GAY,
AND I NEED YOUR SUPPORT
LIKE THE AIR I BREATHE!”
BECAUSE I DON’T PLAN
ON DYING TODAY!
I DON’T ANTICIPATE
THE REAPER’S
OSSIFIED KISS.
I’M NOT SHOPPING
FOR CEMETERY PLOTS.
I’M LOOKING FOR TRUST,
AND LOVE,
AND LIFE!
MORE LIFE
THAN MY BODY
OR THE GOVERNMENT
THINKS I’M OWED.
IT’S SO TEMPTING
TO STARE INTO THE
DARKEST DEPTHS
OF YOUR OWN DESPAIR,
HIGH ALERT
FOR THAT SKELETAL HAND
REACHING THROUGH.
BUT IF YOU DO,
YOU MISS ALL THE
HANDS ABOVE YOU,
WARM AND WAITING,
TO HOLD YOU
AND SQUEEZE YOU
BACK TOGETHER,
NOT FOR FOREVER.
BUT FOR NOW
AND NOW AND NOW AND NOW.
IN THE STEADY SMOOTH PULSE
OF THAT HAND,
I COULD FEEL MYSELF
BEING PULLED
TO TIMES BEFORE, TIME AND TIME AGAIN
WHEN WE HUDDLED TOGETHER
FOR WARMTH,
FOR SAFETY,
FOR UNDERSTANDING,
FOR LOVE.
TRYFAN LIVED!
LONGER THAN ANYONE
COULD’VE THOUGHT THEY WOULD.
THEY SAID THEY’D FIGHT IT
AND THEY DID!
LONG ENOUGH
TO COME OUT
AND LIVE IN THEIR TRUTH
AND TO CARRY ON
THE LEGACY
OF THOSE WHO FOUGHT BEFORE
AND ALONGSIDE THEM.
LONG ENOUGH THAT
EVEN AFTER THEIR DEATH,
I FEEL THEIR HAND
REACH OUT TO ME
THROUGH THE DARKNESS
LIKE A BEACON
LIGHTING THE WAY
TO MORE LIFE.
LEAVE THE CEMETERY ALONE
FOR NOW MY DARLINGS.
AND LOOK FORWARD
AND SEE
HOW MUCH MORE LIFE
THERE’S LEFT
TO LIVE.
-Delaney-

the final elimination of
Before
Race, what I would say to
Drag
Oscar Wilde in 1897
little
It’s amazing how far you’ve come.
You’re in the stone pit now; don’t give up.
Your path is your own, shorter
than you’ll hope. Keep your voracious appetite
long as you can. You have burned
yourself pure page by page, becoming
a trembling narcissus in an April snow.
You could’ve been kinder
Aaron Glover
though you weren’t, and queens and queers
will hold up your name evermore, blazing thyrsus
of defiance, green carnation middle finger bloom.
Stay true to your drag. Impossible to see now, but
you are a pantheon unto yourself, Dionysus
of the belle epoque, Sisyphean struggle,
then Apollo, assuming your place
among constellations. A body cannot stay,
my Oscar, and the nature of human stories is one same
final, unglamorous end. You know your own breaking–
bones and soul–but your genius remains, you also know,
as you always have and refused to deny. It will live on
and grow, glowing
beside Stein, Foucault, Lorde, Kramer, hooks.
Beauty entered your life many times, and has again,
though cloaked now as despair by a gaoler’s hand,
and for yourself, and me, and all who have
and will come between and after, you will not turn
but set down what is true in looping inkéd marks
outlasting prison sentence, bodies, buildings,
nations. Do not color with regret’s blush.
We, as queer people, paint our faces
and choose our families; that, our very gift!
As you sit confined, do not forsake hope,
for as you have awakened to this privilege,
we mark the human path you charted;
each ennobles the other. This, my Oscar,
is all we must do: until the very last, keep going.

Kepler Goodwin
20
please note | please note | please note
PLEASE NOTE
THERE IS VIOLENCE
HATE AND ANGER AND FEAR
TIED THROUGH HISTORY
WITH A NEEDLE AND THREAD
PLEASE NOTE
IT'S PRESENCE IN SQUARES
BOTH IN HERE AND OUT THERE
BEYOND THE DOORS
PLEASE NOTE THE HURT
YOU WILL LOOK AT THESE FACES
THESE NAMES
AND FEEL TEARS IN YOUR EYES
BECAUSE YOU ARE HUMAN
AND IT COULD EASILY BE YOU
OR SOMEONE YOU KNOW
WHO SITS ON THE WALL IN FRONT OF YOU
PLEASE, LOOK BETWEEN THE STITCHING
WHERE THERE IS JOY
LOVE AND HARMONY
INTERWOVEN LIKE HANDS HELD TIGHT
TAKE MINE
TIGHT IN YOURS
PLEASE HOLD ON
BECAUSE THE FEAR MIGHT BE HERE AWHILE MORE
BUT, WE WILL BE TOGETHER
STILL STRONG
AN UNBREAKABLE FORCE
FIGHTING FOR OUR LIVES
PLEASE NOTE
IT WILL GET BETTER
THE PAIN AND SUFFERING TURNED TO
A BAD MEMORY
PLEASE
STAY TO SEE IT THROUGH
STAY WITH ME
PLEASE DON'T LET GO

Prove It on me
(Sung)
“They say I do it
Ain’t nobody caught me
Sho’ll got to prove it on me.”
In the ’20s and ’30s, when the rules were still
being written,
Ma Rainey came and broke every one.
And it’s about time we gave more flowers to
the woman who paved the way—
Who made it possible for a queer artist like
me to have visibility.
Ma Rainey was a Black woman
Who bent desire into music
And dared the world to sing along.
Some nights she sang of men,
Some nights of women,
And some nights the music itself was the only
lover who could keep up.
Known as the Mother of Blues,
Not because she birthed it,
But because she raised it—
Taught it there were no limits to what it could
be.
Ma Rainey’s roots span generationally, stretch
globally.
Blues is the Mother of American Music.
From her womb came children running wild:
Jazz, Gospel, R&B, Country, and Rock and
Roll.
Each carrying her spirit, each echoing her
sound.
Guru
Then came the grandkids:
Disco shimmering,
Hip-Hop spitting,
Rap flowing,
Pop sparkling,
Neo-Soul glowing.
New roots, new beats—
But they all share her DNA.
Echoes of her charisma still reverberate today,
Through Bessie,
Through Billie,
Through Etta,
Little Richard, Tina Turner, James Brown too,
Down the line to Beyoncé, Gaga, and Lil Nas X.
Ma Rainey didn’t just inspire the singer;
She inspired the soul behind the next wave.
(Sung)
“Went out last night with a crowd of my friends
They musta been women, ’cause I don’t like no
men
It’s true I wear a collar and a tie...”
Ma was queer before the word was carved.
On stages where the law said she couldn’t,
A woman on her arm when the world said she
shouldn’t.
Ma’s music spoke of women...
Desire...
Freedom...
And she didn’t whisper about them—she wailed.
She didn’t just sing the blues—
She lived them.
And because she stood unhidden,
She made waves that queer voices could follow.
And if you doubt her power...
If you doubt her claim...
Just close your eyes and listen—
The music remembers.
The influence remains.
(Sung)
“They say I do it
Ain’t nobody caught me
Sho’ll got to prove it on me.”

ARTHUR MARUYAMA
Listen closely - hear the song of the serger's
steady metal pulse. Practiced hands guide
the needle through rounds of stiches and
make the cuts that need to be made.
He operates through the night,
the patient's body a canvas in need of repair
to graft and patch until whole again
As if it could be as simple as removing death -
Cutting it out. Closing the incision.
Falling out of the dream, the surgeon's work
begins to unravel. He dawns in horror
only to find that it's happened again;
his scalpel grows back into a pair of scissors,
forceps become pincushions,
even the operating table turns back
into a quilting desk and
His needle still a needle - his thread still thread,
only now bare of its life-saving qualities and
His patient gone. His patient gone,
And still the sunlight falls in through the window.
God, what good is an artist in a plague?
he doesn't know -
But whoever said that love wasn't going to save us
hasn't seen him there yet:
not quite out of the nightmare, still early mourning,
scrubbing off layers of gloves, those unworn
blue leftovers from the constant daydreams
where he had traded stitching for suture
and fabrication for medicine
but we all have to leave the hospital eventually,
when we're asked to. After it's time to go
Home again, his hands find familiar scraps
of patterned cloth and soft batting
He's no doctor. He never was.
Skilled hands, but still only a quilter -
in another life, he made blankets
And they were beautiful. And no one ever cried
to see him finish one, then begin another.
But in this one, there are still lives to save
and no medicine that could do it.
Only a weaving of memory
And a legacy soft as cloth.
And now I see him, haunting my own desk
hunched over and fiddling with the strings
of my old sewing machine. He embroiders,
'If only I'd been a doctor" again and again.
Sometimes the last word is different. Was that me?
If he never felt this regret,
I hope he might forgive me for assuming.
I'm only scared and
I've been wondering -
What good is an artist in a war?
If I had other skills, I would save everyone
but I only know the body as a lover and
doctors wouldn't need your beauty, your warm
hands,
politicians don't need your dimples or your
handsome chin -
No. If death is to come for you tomorrow,
I have no skills I could use to steal you back.
I can only love you today
and tomorrow, start picking up the strings
22

Two Weddings | Emmy Piercy
Men are dying in ways they’ve never died before
yet we are in the empty house
with all the June day’s cooking done
and you tell me you’ve thought of a game
for us to play
We need the garden, the white dress
from your hope chest, my husband’s hat.
The house has been so quiet
since the war. From the high shelf
in the cool wardrobe I take it
down from Clyde’s things. The shape
feels right for me; cotton shirt, worsted trousers
a new shape, right for me,
the tie—when Pa showed my brother how
Ma wouldn’t let me see—but I fasten it at my neck and
I do see. I see clearly.
The girls come to the garden to play
our game, in suits and frocks; Edith marries off each one
in laughing pairs, but she saves me for you. Man and wife
we parade for Mr. Pearce’s camera. Sitting in my lap
for our portrait, your hand a dove alight on my shoulder,
your lips brush my ear:
what should I call you, husband?
And
I already know the name I will say.
I have held it in my heart since I was born.
I would never tell Clyde, never my folks, but
I whisper it to your ear
and before my lips have gone,
the kiss
24
Through the trees I look out
toward a hundred years from now and I see them:
in June in the park
the wind billowing through the white dress
the two rings changing hands clasped
the one with a whispered name, now said aloud
and oh, their kiss; in the changing tree-light I see them:
someone someday will live in ways
we have never lived before

They tried to stitch our mouths closed, like torn clothes
Yet, we stood BOLD… like these letters
“No H8!”
The crooked seam, they called it Proposition 8 California state tried they best to hem
us out
But even with duct tape on our mouths they was gon hear us OUT - LOUD
A cry without sound!
through fashion, through fabric
still wearing our HEART on our sleeves
for this dress… we have receipts!
Resistance… sewn in by the seamstress
sleeveless, strapless, arms-bared… RARE.
Aware of what we wear even when UNSEEN
because true Love… will always intervene
more than just a gown stitched by Terri King, this was a banner for equality…
A bill board draped in satin
A message they could not mute nor delete…
See this is what you call a statement piece
As for me? Well in 2017, on May 14th
I stood on Santa Monica beach.
The Pacific Ocean as our witness
two sets of footprints in sand, two brides
full of pride, OUT in the open… OUTSIDE
Never to hide again…
My decision to love freely… was mines again.
So with approval from the hot California Sun
That day we overruled any law and anyone who wanted to see us drown…
dismissed anyone who didn’t want to see us smile
Love won…
But love never deserved to be on probation
Love deserves a celebration…
This fabric was the verdict.
Love... is louder than legislation
That dress... worn by Pauley Perrette was evident
But our dresses - our dresses was evidence…
that we took back control
you can’t paint us all equal, then skip over the rainbow
They tried to stitch our mouths closed, like torn clothes…
Yet, we stood BOLD…
Like these letters “No H8!”
No h8
Mz. Trill

Home Run
Jennifer Elise Wang
BALL I.
I didn’t understand baseball
Metaphors for sex as a teen—
Too ace to remember the bases.
I took so long to get “pitcher” and “catcher”
My queerness came into question.
BALL II.
I never understood why girls
Weren’t supposed to play baseball.
If girls are safer with a softer ball,
How do you explain female skaters
Slamming on the same concrete as the guys?
STRIKE I.
I was saving myself for marriage
Because it’s what good Taiwanese-American
girls did,
But I never felt like a good Taiwanese-American
girl
And what if I fell in love with another girl
And gay marriage never got legalized?
The idea of saving myself suddenly seemed
stupid.
I didn’t think I was part of the rainbow then,
But there was always the What If
And my secret desire to be butch
Because tomboys are supposed to grow out of it
So they wouldn’t dirty their white dresses.
26
STRIKE II.
I don’t actually want a wedding,
But I still secretly fantasize about one.
Even then, the poofy white dress
(That’s sometimes black instead)
Looks better on a mannequin
Than this body that feels as much home
As Taiwan— which is not very.
It’s a relief to have escaped the
The multi-wedding curse of the multicultural
Because I wouldn’t know how to explain
In my shrinking native tongue
That while I’m okay with “female” on my
passport,
I’m not going to be anyone’s “wife”
Even after the ring is placed on my finger.
I avoid visiting Taiwan
Because I have nothing to say.
BALL III.
I don’t understand baseball,
But I get “bottom of the ninth”.
It’s Tony Hawk at the top of the ramp
Giving one last go at the 900.
It’s the final vote after years of campaigning—
Make (the home run/trick/resolution)
Or break (the body/spirit).
VI.
When Taiwan legalized gay marriage,
I wasn’t sure I was reading about the same country
So I had to go see for myself.
After the obligatory family visits,
I step into a shop selling flags and binders.
I buy a rainbow pineapple button
And tell the clerk about a queerlesque friend
Who loved pineapples as much as Taiwanese
people did,
Who handed me her wedding invite backstage,
Who was gone before she could give me
The gender-affirming haircut I needed.
But now her memory has given me this connection
Forged despite the missing Mandarin words.
I take a selfie at Taipei’s rainbow crosswalk,
Which looks a lot like my Gayborhood’s.
I’ve finally found a piece of home here.

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