Bra Lola Willis __________ I turn the remains in my grieving fingers, black satin thinning, dotted by tiny specks of pink lint.  He outlived the pronouns you tossed into the mouth of the beast along with the last scratches of your identity: Army-green jacket, bruised guitar, scarf paint-stained, broken phone—what…

Queer Pursuits, Lights the Moon to Spite the Sun, & Mood 48 Is A Gay One Bradley David Waters __________ Queer Pursuits You know that grumbling truck         The one with scowling headlights                and cow-catcher grill                       You’ll never catch me I say                                   Pinned in its radiator                                              …

Lazarus & The First Books They Burned Francis Waguespack __________ LazarusThe morning after the floodwaters recede,                                                                   my neighbor’s chickens are loose on our street,                                                                  red hens stepping gingerly over debris,                                                                  unexpectedly dignified. The elder next door,                                                                 Ms. Josephine, calls out from her porch:                                                                 “They survived! Look at them struuuuuuuttin!”                                                                 Her voice carries across the mud-slick…

Wolf Moon, 1986 & Blood Moon, 2025 Daniel Nathan Terry __________ Wolf Moon, 1986 There is little               a lonely boy will refuse. Littlehe’ll protect. Almost nothing               he’ll turn down. Kisses alone he’ll withhold. Only girls               kiss boys. I knewwhy other boys turned my head               each time I tried to show them love. Wasn’t gay               to…

poem after a student at my university got on the mic at graduation and said trans people didn’t exist & poem as instructions for survival nat raum __________ poem after a student at my university got on the mic at graduation and said trans people didn’t exist An American sonnet…

FCA Doughnuts Mike Piero __________ Suggestive donuts, purified bottled water, and coffeefor the lanky, balding Mr. Burnes marked that spaceof early morning fellowship my freshman year of highschool where I—and a few others, I suspect—workedto pray our nearly already silent gay away. In high school trailers of desert air and…

At fifteen you tell me I will probably never be okay, Clueless, Phoebe Bridgers, and I were all born six months apart and that feels like it means something, & The poem I write after reading Toni Morrison’s Sula Bleah Patterson __________ At fifteen you tell me I will probably…

Liberation Will Come & Euphoria Icarus Olsen __________ Liberation Will Come Yet, it will be felt firstIn a dimly-lit dingy bar mens bathroom,behind a stall doorPaint chipping off, hinges barely hanging onSmell of spilled beer and piss attacks your noseFor a good time call…. In sloppy red half-wiped off sharpieOn…

Farmland Craig Cotter __________ We’d leave the backyard of my parents’ housefor the farmer’s land.Walk into the woods he left untoucheddown to a river.A small, slow-moving river— maybe more a creek— say 8 feet across and that late summer day2 feet deep. We’d cross the water,my tennis shoesyour work boots…

Trans Substantiation, Hypertrophy, & Lunacy Adrian Costello __________ Trans Substantiation You say God does not make mistakes.So what if the mistake is yours?Mistaking form for function, insistingon immutability as impermanence unfoldsbefore us all. What if God wants thistransformation, not just mine, not justthe miracle of becoming–truly–inthis body with a kind…