Two Poems by Nancy Squires

As the Waters Rise

 

O God, look down
On all our drowned.
Hear us, we beg—
We’re on our knees.
Sorry, so sorry
About the trees,

The polar bears, the birds,
The bees; the icebergs
Gone, the thirsty lawns,
Plastic gyres, redwood
Pyres and all the many,
many cars. The eclipsed stars

We never see. Our Father
In Heaven, we pray
To Thee: Give us
This day.
We promise, oh we swear
On a stack of extinctions

We will repair
Our awful ways
And lead us not into oblivion
Although we can’t pretend
We had no clue. Save us
Now—before
Amen.

 

It’s No Use, Ron DeSantis

 

Before Marie Kondo-ing
I had a pile of beads
in a drawer, cheap baubles
from Gay Prides past:
Chicago, where the crowd spilled
into Halsted, slowing the procession
to a crawl; New York,
where drag queens rode the floats
in headdresses three feet tall
just like Carnival; and Boston,
many years—the one
where Kevin was The Little Mermaid
on the Disney float—his costume
(which he stitched himself),
perfection and his makeup,
animated glam. That woman on the Harley
who dyed her mohawk rainbow
every year, and the time
Sally spotted her coworker
coming down the route—
she was surprised to see him
in a wine-colored corset.
No beads
from Lansing, Michigan,
my first Pride—not
a parade but a march
and what got thrown
at us were insults, curses, glares
from people holding signs
that said God hated us.
So let’s say gay
and everything else
there is to say.
I should’ve kept that pile
of shiny plastic beads—
not sure if it was joy
they sparked but something—
Kevin reclining up there
amongst the other Disney folk
his shimmery mermaid tail
sparkling in the morning sun.
Say it: gay.
All the livelong day.
She and he and them
and they: we
aren’t going back
inside the boxes.

 


Nancy Squires is a writer, lawyer, and freelance copy editor. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Dunes Review, Split Rock Review, and Blueline Magazine. She grew up, and currently resides, in Michigan.

Photo credit: Linda De Volder via a Creative Commons license.


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Vile Affections

By Soon Jones

 

I grow up in a Florida church being warned about
god-hating bull dykes and sissy fairy fags
leaving the natural use of the woman,
which is sex, because
all a woman is good for
is sex and tempting men.

Yet when a woman tempts another woman
somehow that is not about sex,
though I’m pretty sure it is:
I want Crystal instead of Stephen,
the hottest boy in youth group,
apparently.

At a sleepover with church girls
I panic when they throw
down a copy of J-14 magazine
with *NSync on the cover,
and interrogate me on who
I want to marry.
This is a trap:
there have been rumors about me
and they’re all true.

I pick Lance Bass for his friendly face.
This is not the wrong answer,
but it is still not the right answer.
I should have said Justin Timberlake or JC Chasez,
apparently, but I’ve made my bed

so now I have to buy Lance Bass stickers
and say how hot Lance Bass is at youth group
and now everything I own is covered
in Lance Bass. I even write about him
in my diary, in case someone reads it.

I doodle in my Lance Bass notebook
while my pastor rants about an “it”
with “hips of a woman, but a face like a man”
who served him coffee in some roadside diner.
He shares his fantasy of renting a room
in a Miami hotel close to the gay bars
on Memorial Day weekend, and how,

God willing,

he would hide in the air ducts
and descend on the bull dykes and sissy fags
with an AK-47 and a Bowie knife, for
they which commit such things
are worthy of death.
He throws his head back in ecstasy,
licks his lips at the thought
of all those queers he would sacrifice
on the altar before the Lord.

I hold Lance Bass to my chest
as the men shout “Amen!”
tossing hymnals at the pulpit
like panties.

 


Soon Jones is a Korean lesbian poet from the rural countryside of the American South. Their work has been published in Juke Joint, Westerly, beestung, and Moon City Review, among others. They can be found at soonjones.com, on Twitter, and on Instagram.

Poet’s note: Passages in italics are taken from Romans 1:27 and 1:32.

Photo Credit: “Ungodly Hate” by K-B Gressitt.


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Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

Sip-In: 1966

By Jesse Mavro Diamond

 

For LGBT Rights Activist Dick Leitsch

 

Carpenters, bankers, bricklayers, undertakers.
Why gay bars?
Because we could only be gay
In gay bars.

The N.Y. State Liquor Authority CEO:
no discrimination in bars. Why?
because bars had the right to refuse customers
not acting suitably. Therefore, disorderly.

Bankers, bricklayers, undertakers, carpenters.
And Dick, a former Tiffany salesman
all risking entrapment because
wasn’t flirtation with a cute, undercover cop
worth the risk?

At the West Village bar,
John, Dick, Craig and Randy
dropped the “H” word bomb.
We are homosexuals and we want a drink.
Dick, Craig, John and Randy
I can’t serve you!
You’re not suitable! Therefore disorderly!

It’s true:
when a carpenter has sex with a banker
or a bricklayer has sex with an undertaker
or a John has sex with a Craig
or a Randy has sex with a Rick

being orderly is simply not suitable.

 


Jesse Mavro Diamonds latest book of poetry, American Queers, will be published in 2022 by Cervena Barva Press. Her poetry has been published in many journals in The U.S. and Ireland. Her awards include first place in Eidos magazine’s international poetry competition for “A Very Sober Story,” the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival’s One of Ten Best Poems in the U.S. for “Swimming The Hellespont,” and “Chetwynd Morning,” chosen by Lascaux Review for its prize anthology. “An Elegy for Devron,” was musically scored by composer Mu Xuan Lu and premiered at Jordan Hall, Boston, in 2008. For many years, Mavro Diamond taught writing courses in Boston area colleges and high schools. She initiated and taught the first creative writing course Boston Latin School ever offered in its 386-year history.

Photo credit: USC Doheny Memorial Library.