STILL HERE, STILL QUEER, DIFFERENT DAY

by Jeffrey Bryant

Protestors gather outside of the Central Branch of Howard County Public Library in Columbia MD on Monday, Feb. 26, 2024. Inside the library, the Howard County branch of Moms for Liberty prepares to hold a meeting to discuss how to approach removing books that might be seen as sexually explicit in the Howard County Public School district. (Sam Mallon/for the Baltimore Banner)

still here, still queer, we awaken
to a feeling mighty real reveille,
for another day of thrusts and parries
against public monsters who
fly erasure’s blood red flags 
blinding with the whites of their lies. 

there’s politics inside our orgasms.
sucking you is forbidden speech.
we didn’t sign up for war,
we were drafted 
by our body’s desires. 

we spend all night in each other’s arms
keeping our tongues safe from harm
during nightmares, insomnia, 
and the morning alarm, until
another reveille of feeling real. 

Jeffrey Bryant is a queer poet/writer who lives in Los Angeles. He has been or will be published in the Los Angeles Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Poetic Diversity, the New Verse News, Poetrysuperhighway.com, and in the forthcoming November issue of Synkroniciti Magazine. His work has also appeared in the anthologies The Coiled Serpent from Tia Chucha Press; the 2020 Altadena Literary Review from Shabda Press; Shadowplay Literary Journal from the University of Arkansas and Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts from Mystic Boxing Commission Press. His work has been nominated for a 2024 Pushcart Prize.

NEX

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

In his three years as state superintendent for Oklahoma’s public schools, Ryan Walters, a former high school history teacher, has transformed himself into one of the most strident culture warriors in a state known for sharp-edged conservative politics. Following the death earlier this month of a 16-year-old nonbinary student a day after an altercation in a high school girls’ bathroom, gay and transgender advocates accused Mr. Walters of having fomented an atmosphere of dangerous intolerance within public schools. In his first interview reacting to the death of the student, Nex Benedict, Mr. Walters told The New York Times that the death was a tragedy, but that it did not change his views on how questions of gender should be handled in schools. “There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us,” Mr. Walters said, saying he did not believe that nonbinary or transgender people exist. He said that Oklahoma schools would not allow students to use preferred names or pronouns that differ from their birth sex. “You always treat individuals with dignity or respect, because they’re made in God’s image,” Mr. Walters said. “But that doesn’t change truth.” —The New York Times, February 23, 2024. A state senator [Oklahoma Republican State Sen. Tom Woods] said during a public forum in Tahlequah that LGBTQ+ people are “filth,” and that he and his constituents don’t want them in “our state.” —Tahlequah Daily Press, February 23, 2024. The police released video of the student, Nex Benedict, recounting the altercation a day before their death, which has drawn national scrutiny. —The New York Times, February 24, 2024

 

 
People insist flyover country 
gets a bad rap. It’s a place of trigger
happy Trumpy fundamentalists 
and bigots, dull and flat, filled with hate
incensed that Jackson could be replaced
by Tubman on the twenty where school 
principals don’t call ambulances 
when students are beaten for being 
who they are and thanks to someone named 
Chaya you can’t access the works of Toni 
Morrison or Kwame Alexander don’t you dare 
mention Harry Potter.
 
In the past I’ve insisted 
you can find fine dining 
excellent wine 
and terrific company anywhere
beauty is in the eye of the beholder
the flatlands are profound places
perfect for soul searching silence 
 
and now there are fine vineyards 
everywhere, even places where few
people if anyone speak French. 
 
But I feel prepared to recant 
any previous defense 
because you won’t be killed 
for using a bathroom
just anywhere. 
 
The State of Oklahoma has decided 
it officially, legally hates people 
who see themselves as people 
first, rather than female or male
 
and so a person 
—aren’t we all people first—
named Nex died 
after they 
a person 
used a bathroom for girls 
but some other girls backed
by the State of Oklahoma 
decided Nex shouldn’t 
because they wouldn’t 
say (like Beyoncé once did) 
if I were a boy 
 
it makes me think of the old bad days 
when people of color had to piss 
their pants because of No Service 
they could not be caught taking a leak 
in the street or out back of a building 
since the law 
always in vigilante hands  
would catch them dead 
for answering nature’s call. 
 
Oh, nature. Evil since Eve ate the apple. 
The State of Oklahoma seems to think 
nothing has changed since fictional Adam
couldn’t die when someone reached into 
his chest cavity—in a time before antiseptics—
and stole his rib, to plant in the Earth 
all so this curious miracle could be betrayed 
by one of only two genders. 
 
I want to ask those legislators 
in flyover Oklahoma and the 10  
states whose lawgivers spend their 
time snooping in stalls
(I want to ask my question preferably 
to their face)
 
And who’s the snake?  

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. Recent work appears/will appear in Terrain.org, Belt, Rattle, Wilderness House, Mad In America, Writers Resist, Poetica Review, and Unlikely Stories. Jeremy’s latest book is Flint River published by Alien Buddha Press 2023.

TEACHER, END OF WEEK ONE

by Jerry Krajnak

Early autumn Friday afternoon.
Erasing idle pencil marks on a desk
where a child’s elbow earlier rested, her face
gazing up through the newly polished glass to watch
the geese head south, a sight, of course, that was missed
by a teacher who always stands as he applies
the disinfectant spray to dirty desks.
 
Our funds are tight, administration says.
We let our custodians go the day we fired
all counselors and librarians. So, banish the dirt
from all those desks. Like we’ve done with books.
 
The teacher pauses, moves to the window, looks out,
sees caterpillars chew on poplar leaves.
He thinks about his student loan, regrets
the loss of youthful glee about this job.
Another row of desks. One hundred seventy-five
more days. He turns back to the window, notes
that outside the chewing continues. He watches, smiles.
They soon will find a sheltered spot to wait,

then rise as something new when the weather warms.

Jerry Krajnak gardens, writes poetry, and worries in his North Carolina retirement cabin. Recent poems appear in Star 82 Review, Rat's Ass Review, The New Verse News, Autumn Sky Poetry, and other journals.

THE LIBRARIAN AT THE SCHOOL WHERE EVERY CHALLENGE SUCCEEDS

by Cecil Morris

Photo by Stu_Spivak

The Bible is among dozens of books [including the graphic novel adaptation of Anne Frank's diary and numerous books with LGBTQ+ themes or characters] removed from this Texas school district. —NPR, August 18, 2022

I like our high school library now—the high ceiling,

the tall windows inviting light, the shelves throwing

their long shadows onto each other, their blond wood,

so easy to dust and polish now. Something stately,

a little grand, a little minimalist—a kind

of puritan austerity, I think you could say,

now that all the books have been withdrawn, all the ideas

removed from circulation, stored now off site and out

of sight. No more books to face or edge or try to dust,

those uneven tops. No more rows of books to cull

for the out of date, the never read—or checked out,

at least—the ones defaced by flip-page cartoons, or drawn-

in dicks, or very personal slurs that should be kept

to lavatory stalls. No more issuing fines

for books late or lost. I know, as librarian,

I should miss the books, both learned tomes and flights

of fantasy, but this vacuous cleanliness

appeals to my love of order and simplicity,

and the kids—the students—still come in with their phones

where they can find the whole world in bite-size chunks,

where they can Google, scroll, and cite Wikipedia.

And I do not have to check anything out or in

or shush any heads bent over the little lights.

I guess this is what the school board and parents want.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher, divides his time between Oregon and California.  He has poems in or forthcoming from 3Elements, Ekphrastic Review, English Journal, Evening Street Review, Hiram Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Scapegoat, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines.

THE HOUNDS OF DOGMA

The Story of an Uncaged Mind

by Katherine West

At first I didn't even know there was a cage.  I knew only the wind and cold of my cliff.  At night the wind slept, so I could fly.  Where did I not travel?  No land not open to my wings.  No black mountain, no turquoise sea, no rumpled forest, no littered beach.  No red-roofed pueblo, no city of glass and steel.  No ruin of stone. 

I flew through time as well as space.  I saw apes descend from trees.  I watched the glaciers retreat.  I watched pyramids attempt to touch the stars. I watched the first book being printed. I watched trains try to circumnavigate the world.  

My wings reached the future too.  I saw the sky turn from blue to brown.  Saw the oceans flood.  Saw the deserts grow with their own white tides.  Saw the libraries close. 

I saw the Hounds of Dogma waiting every time I tried to land.  The Guardians of Thought standing at attention on either side of the cage I now saw for the first time.  Oh!  How it glowed in the sun's first light.  Like a little sun itself, offering my heavy wings a rest. 

 

One by one I watched the birds of the world enter the cage, burn, die and never rise again.  With each friend, I burned and died as well, feeling every feather that shriveled in the flames.

I died.  But my wings did not.  They beat and beat above the molten ash that was the grieving rest of me. 

Once.  My wings hovered before the golden door.  Once.  They soared back and forth as the Guardians of Thought shoveled me up and tossed me into the cage. 

Once.  They swooped so low the Hounds of Dogma snapped and feathers drifted to the ground.  Once more, my wings rose, circled, then faded into sky, releasing one blue plume that rocked gently as it floated through the bars of my cage and touched down on my bed of ash like a windblown seed. 

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer.  Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, and Southwest Word Fiesta. The New Verse News nominated her poem "And Then the Sky" for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico and at the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado. She is also an artist.