queer. Therefore, I intend to fight
fascism with flamboyance.
I will swirl about America
in Deborah Kerr's dress from The King and I
and warble in my blithest trill
getting to know you,
getting to know all about you...
The Trump Administration
is turning me gayer than Morrissey.
Learn to hate me, you cancerous fuckers.
Assemble the goddamn ways.
I will be bi, pan,
voile et vapeur, AC/DC,
gleefully switch-hitting, a three-dollar bill.
I will blare Culture Club at Republican lawmakers,
I will Bowie and Freddie them into submission.
I will glitter the evangelicals, curtsy
to Oklahoma deacons. I will strew
pink carnations and heart-shaped confetti
on the asphalt trodden by ICE.
I will incense the icons of Keith and Renée
and all the others whose names go unreported.
I will vanquish the murderers with the B-52s, Elton John,
Alicia Bridges, Dusty Springfield,
the Pet Shop Boys, the Communards.
I will preach and prooftext, in season, out of season,
with the limber cadenzas of Ginsberg,
with the dapper iambics of Auden,
with the plaintive ballads of Lorca.
I will be the filthy limerick
in your Epistle to the Romans,
the drag queen at your prayer breakfast,
the non-binary poet in your Department of War.
I will take your Supreme Court
and Diana Ross it to a timely and fabulous death.
Thomas DeFreitas (he/him/his) was born in Boston in 1969. He was educated at the Boston Latin School, and attended the University of Massachusetts in Amherst for three calamitous semesters. He has published five collections with Kelsay Books, including Elegies & Devotions (2025) and Winter in Halifax (2021). His latest, Consider, is seeking a publisher. Thomas is a resident of Arlington, Massachusetts, and (along with his scores of poetfriends) is currently plotting to take over the explorable universe and permeate it with lyrical benevolence.
