POGUE

a duet-poem

by James Schwartz & Joshua Merchant 

Dedicated to LGBTQ Africa 

Uganda / Iraq / Iran / Tennessee ban

Man / Man / Referendum / Under ban

The streets are red / Throats red

Men of God mock our dead.

bury me under your usages 

of my cousins you told to be 

real enough to see seventeen 

under an underpass pass the school.

Priests / Preachers / Pastors / Political

Queers / Debacle / Death / Ridicule

The streets are silent / Mob violent

The Church is barred / Shamans silent.

loudly calling us everything under

the book bins by burning the cooked 

pens held by our teachers your forefathers 

sent by a ship disguised as emails and hit send.

Scott Lively / Greg Locke / Exporting hate

In AK-America / Always great

In Harvey Milk / David Kato / Frank Mugisha we trust

In rainbow love we trust /

a bloodlust called me by your name. spoke of God. 

my father taught me the difference between 

little and big G’s. I know your wallet knows us well. 

which pocket swells when you hear a bullet shelled? 

Uganda / Iraq / Iran / Florida ban

Man / Man / Under ban

Republicans going rogue

Preachers / Same thing / pogue. 

James Schwartz is a poet & author of various poetry collections including The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (Kindle, 2011), Punatic (Writing Knights Press, 2019) & most recently Motor City Mix, Sunset in Rome (Alien Buddha Press, 2022). He resides in Detroit, Michigan. Twitter @queeraspoetry  

Joshua Merchant is a Black Queer native of East Oakland, CA exploring what it means to be human as an intersectional being. What they’ve been exploring as of late has been in the realm of loving and what it means while processing trauma. They feel as though as a people, especially those of us more marginalized than others, it has become too common to deny access to our true source of power as a means of feeling powerful. However, they’ve come to recognize with harsh lessons and divine grace that without showing up for ourselves and each other, everything else is null and void. Innately, everything Merchant writes is a love letter to their people. Because of this they’ve had the honor to witness their work being held, understood, published or forthcoming in literary journals such as 580Split, The Root Work Journal, Anvil Tongue Books, Spiritus Mundi Review, and elsewhere. Twitter: @ibursailor_dune 

INITIAL PROMISES

by Stephen House

there were initial promises

from the Taliban

to form an inclusive government

 

there will be no women

in government

 

women playing sport

is not appropriate

 

women will be killed

if they commit adultery

 

LGBTQ people’s mere existence

means an automatic death sentence

 

LGBTQ Afghans are on the run

fearing they will be stoned to death

under Taliban law

 

Ahmadullah says

the Taliban beheaded his boyfriend

on the day they entered Kabul

Ahmadullah is in hiding

 

UN and US warn the Taliban

we are watching you

 

what will watching do?

 

there were initial promises

from the Taliban

to form an inclusive government

Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright and actor. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts and an Asia-link India residency. His chapbook real and unreal was published by ICOE Press. He’s published often and performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

BYE, BYE, ST. PAT'S PARADE

by Andrés Castro

When organizers of the Staten Island St. Patrick’s Day Parade again decided to bar members of the borough’s LGBTQ pride center from participating, Madison L’Insalata decided to take a stand. L’Insalata, this year’s Miss Staten Island, came out as bisexual in the New York Post and the Staten Island Advance on Saturday. She told those newspapers that she planned to wear rainbow clothing while marching in Sunday’s [March 1, 2020] parade to show support for the LGBTQ community. —The Washington Post, March 3, 2020

Pressed on why the Island’s Pride Center was denied permission to march openly, a parade organizer with the fraternal order, Larry Cummings, said: “Here’s the deal, it’s a non-sexual identification parade and that’s that, no, they are not marching. Don’t try to keep asking a million friggin’ questions, OK?” Cummings continued when asked if the Ancient Order of Hibernians would ever allow the Pride Center to march in the future. “The fact of the matter is that’s what it is, OK? And that’s that.” —The Staten Island Advance, February 19, 2020

Silly Rabbit.
They are marching.
They are watching too.
On the street. At home.
In Iraq and Afghanistan.
Look! That one’s wearing
a blue uniform and a fucking badge!
Holy Shit! They’re everywhere!

Baby.
Hold on to your Lucky Charms.

Andrés Castro, a PEN member, is listed in Poets & Writers Directory and regularly posts work on his personal blog, The Practicing Poet. He lives in Queens, NY.

IN FRINGE

by James Penha

“The people of West Sumatra have a culture that can’t be separated from Islam. This has been the case since a long time ago. If the people and government here create a regulation that bans LGBT behavior because it’s not in line with tradition, then it’s not wrong nor is it a violation of human rights.” —Indonesia National Commission on Human Rights Chairman Ahmad Taufan Damanik, February 14, 2019

When human rights

ain’t right in its Head

of Human Rights who

writes off marginal runes

and the humans so cast

to religious rites of hate

and intolerance, a state

wrights a ship with tar

and feathers that sinks

of its own disaccord.

James Penha edits TheNewVerse.News.

INCANTATION: LET THE MAGIC BEGIN

by Mare Leonard

art by Noely Ryan @ ArtStation

You can't catch me, I'm the Gingerbread Man. I can grab your pussy, stick out my tongue, spit, sputter like geysers from below.

Into what hell of fake news,  ruse of tax cuts,  mountains of lies, the lawyer in the room guise  stirs the cauldron  today? Don't lean on hopes of Flynt. He scratched a rock, lit a light of immunity for morality or him? Like a geyser, he may spark, sputter, reach to the sky and fizzle. The devil resides in the cauldron below. Deep under the caw caw of the crow, geysers spout up and we shout this is it, the one, howl, don't let babies burn  burn, burn, don't let lifelines fall through the cracks, don't give  billions to the rich. don't mock the middle, the poor, the immigrant. Drown out congressmen in LaLaLand who like Marie Antoinette shout, Let them eat cake. Geese honkhonk, Resist. How does the GOPP, the party of the pedophiles exist, how do they move and eat and sleep? Hooked on opiods, burgers, midnight tweets, a belief in trickle down economics, the lie that sweeps the donors cash for their ten thou dinner treats, another castle on a hill?  We observe, take photos when the earth splits, sweeps you all below. We sing, you can run you but you can't hide, you can shout  but Mueller and the FBI will  crack you GingerBreadMan and your vanilla wafer friends. You'll tremble and crumble, rollrollroll into the underland.  And in the heavens  the #MeToo will light the sky.  We'll sing, love, love, love, hug women, men, babies, The LGBTQ, DACA, Muslims all who  rise from the dead to hear from above no one can  pardon the King of Scam.

Mare Leonard lives in an old school house overlooking The Rondout Creek. Away from her own personal blackboard, she teaches through the Institute for Writing and Thinking and the MAT program at Bard College.  Although her most natural writing voice is humorous she has published in a range of voices and in all forms and subject matters. She was a finalist in last year's NY State Di Biase contest. Some of her latest publications appear in the Vietnam poetry publication from Perfume River, Rats Ass Review, Figroot, Sweet Tree, Eunoia and in the British Journal of Arts&Letters.

T***P VISITS GOLF CLUB FOR THIRD CONSECUTIVE WEEKEND

by JP Thelbert Bryant

Donald Trump has played golf every four days of his presidency.

—The Independent (UK) October 23, 2017

What’s out there, the solution to healthcare?
Secret plans to back down North Korea?
An apology letter about Russia’s interference?
Pussies to grab?

And do you ever feel guilty in those tight khakis
and white shirt, that children are hungry,
that gays are scared, that religion is taking over,
that women hurt?

Does it make you feel powerful to swing a club, put balls in holes,
tug on that baseball cap probably made in China?

I wonder these things as I work everyday, as I set aside money for sickness, as I monitor the gasoline I use, the food I buy.

I have no time for golf. Most of us have no time for golf.
We have to worry about feeding our children, fending off diseases,
nuclear bombs, conservative evangelicals dictating our lives,
our bodies, our minds.

But only pretty rich folks play with you.
And no one wants to think about sad things anyway.
It’s just some of us have to think about them. Everyday.

JP Thelbert Bryant is a poet and a writer of creative nonfiction. He is a graduate of the low residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. He lives in the woods of Virginia where he burns incense, deer watches, and dreams of oceans.

BOY TURNED GIRL

by William Ruleman

Image source: National Geographic

You gaze from the face of the magazine at me,
And you are beautiful, I have to say,
Despite an impish male audacity
That lingers round your lips and eyes the way
A lad will do when forced into a fray.
O brave new world indeed, when we can change
Impediments in us that make us strange
To all the wonder that most suits the soul!
Some surgeries can show us who we are—
Can heal us, make us healthy, human, whole—
And whether love is near to us or far,
We know how we will meet it, play our role.
Not so when manmade tribal mutilations
Cheat the flesh of heavenly sensations!
The Lord God guard you from all hate and harm:
Self-righteous rants and priggish piety,
Lascivious longings and resentment’s storm.
May you find in saints’ society
A means to keep your heart and senses warm,
And may your offspring—if you have them—know
The gracefulness and courage you now show.

Editor's Note: Meanwhile . . . "A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals this week lifted a lower court injunction that had stopped the implementation of what many legal observers and LGBTQ activists view as the worst, most dangerous legislative attack on LGBTQ people yet. . . . The law allows for businesses and government employees to decline service to LGBT people, and that includes bakers, florists, county clerks and even someone working at the department of motor vehicles, based on religious beliefs. It allows for discrimination in housing and employment against same-sex couples or any individual within a same-sex couple. Businesses and government, under the law, can regulate where transgender people go to the bathroom. The law allows mental health professionals and doctors, nurses and clinics to turn away LGBT individuals. It also allows state-funded adoption agencies to turn away LGBT couples." —Michelangelo Signorile, "Queer Voices," HuffPost, June 23, 2017

William Ruleman resides in east Tennessee. His newest books include the poetry collections From Rage to Hope (White Violet Press, 2016) and Munich Poems (Cedar Springs Books, 2016), as well as his translations of Hermann Hesse’s early poems (Cedar Springs Books, 2017) and Stefan Zweig’s unfinished novel Clarissa (Ariadne Press, 2017).