Hematology

by sam sax

while he lives

here’s a list

of images

light in a filthy glass

pigeon dead on the high spiked window

clear plastic bag above him full of water if water could kill everything that lives in you & it can — 

i sit in a corner of the cancer ward

fingering the app that shows me

other faggots in this hospital

chat with one

i might meet in radiology

but don’t       instead

make the sick man laugh

while he’s conscious

compliment his gown

his new brutal cheekbones

that appeared with the chemo

if only it were simple as a magnet

sucking the bad metals out of him

if only i could make a better list

more magic      less language

periphrastic & restorative

if only i met that stranger

in the basement

& our pleasure rose

through the hospital

bliss poultice

for the sorrow-skinned who sit

half-conscious & half-machinery

while the sick man lives

all i can do is recount

the vast pastoral of his illness

when he is gone i’m counting

on all the good flooding back

his beard

a collapsed country

i’ll refuge inside

his laugh

a memory

so liquid

i’ll hear it

when anyone

opens a window

to scare the birds

Source: Poetry (June 2016)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

Smell Is the Last Memory to Go

by Fatimah Asghar

on my block, a gate
on my block, a tree smelling

of citrus & jasmine that knocks
me back into the arms of my dead

mother. i ask Ross how can a tree
be both jasmine & orange, on my block

my neighbors put up gates & stare
don’t like to share, on my block

a tree I can’t see, but can smell
a tree that can’t be both but is

on my block, my mother’s skirt twirls
& all i smell is her ghost, perfume

on my block, a fallen orange
smashed into sidewalk

its blood pulped on asphalt on my
block, Jordan hands me a jasmine

by the time i get home
all its petals are gone

Source: Poetry (April 2019)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

Separation, Parts

by Dani Janae

for Sarah

I’LL NAME MY DAUGHTER ZARA—
an ode to you as force going
vastly in every direction.
I speak to become a child
in the early stages
of recognizing her own voice:

teach me how to braid my hair.
Teach me how a name hangs on
like a gummy tooth. Descent.
All these years of my life.

I want you to hold me
so that I don’t burst
— a collapsing star.

          descent cloaking itself
           in the same dark
           as departure.

I don’t want to grow old
never knowing how you
called me. Teach me how
a name fissures
and fractures
like a gummy tooth.

My primitive devotion turns
tongue into bedrock, and I try
to conjure you from the well
of my chest. I discovered
my own hands too late to never
let you go; both of us now lying
in the absence between
longing and belonging.

You were an isle, then you weren’t.

Oh, to be yours
for one second.

The ecosystem
of the mouth tells everything.

I ask the hollow ground about being born
and she tells me it’s too great, too heavy.

Source: Slush Pile Magazine, Issue 23.

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

Explorer

by Kazim Ali

I fear dispersal but the resounding really sounds may be full of echo
or echolocation for the next round

Eye rowed in the guest book of God my many sacred tongues
body and bow

Fingers spell now all the spaces I open
You now verse now open oh pen

Cacti quiver for a century
In the desert I swam myself earthword to know

No time on earth and no breath no dearth
Hollowed out into architecture eternal

Who argues with rhyme or snow
Who knows the space in your here

The space in the storm so finely bowed
The space in snow no one nears

Originally published in Poetry (March 2019)

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.

The Gunman

by Steven Sanchez

Imagine:

                              the four chambers of my heart

                                                                           each loaded with a bullet,

                              each beat another revolution

                                                            in my chest,

my throat

                              a barrel,

                                                            my curled tongue

                                                                                                         a trigger.

                                                            I believe

                                                                           in spirits,

in every fag

                              and queer

                                                            I’ve heard

                                                                           and allowed

                                                                                                         to pass through my body

                                                            and into the next.

I believe

                              in possession,

                                                            believe each metal slug

                              entering our bodies

                                                                                          tonight is a history

                              we can’t escape,

                                                                                          forged in factories

                              across this country

                                                                                          by men

                                                            who feel threatened

                                                                                                                        by love.

And when I stare

                                                            into my reflection

                                                                                          one last time tonight,

                              I know each pupil

will become an exit

                                                                                          wound.

                                                                                                                        I’ve spent my life

                              learning to lie

                                                            to myself,

                                                                                          but tonight

the truth

                              will enter my body,

                                                            will hurt,

                                                                                          will kill,

                                                                                                                        will leave

an echo.

Originally published in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, August 3, 2016

Most Poetry will post a poem by a LGBTQ+ poet, selected by our members, each day through the month of August.