THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS MAKING ME

by Thomas DeFreitas

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.

ODE TO A MAGA FUTURE

by Peter Witt

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

I don't care if 
Ukraine ends up a satellite of Russia
Israel annexes all Palestinian lands
Poland goes the way of Ukraine
NATO goes defunct

as long as egg prices go down.

I don't care if 
all judges are Trump appointees
gay marriage is outlawed
trans individuals are discriminated against
raped women must still have their babies

as long as bread prices go down

I don't care if
rich people get huge tax breaks
oil and gas wells are drilled on pristine national lands
regulations allow polluting rivers and waterways
steps to reduce climate change are abandoned

as long as the cost of a gallon of gas goes down

I don't care if
things I buy that are made in China become more expensive
illegal immigrants are rounded up and sent home
people to harvest the nation's crops become scarce
workers who build housing and infrastructure disappear

as long as Christian nationalism becomes the law of the land

Peter Witt is a Texas poet, a frequent contributor to The New Verse News and other online poetry web-based publications.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

by David Southward

Rocky, who declined to provide his last name because he works downtown, was calling out to delegates and others leaving the RNC on Wednesday night, asking them about their views on LGBT issues. "You crashed our website!" he said, referring to news that Grindr was experiencing outages in Milwaukee during the RNC due to high traffic.—USA Today Network, July 19, 2024

While red-blooded men in Milwaukee
went ape on a gay walkie-talkie—
their fists pumped at Trump
while trolling for rump—
this fairy stayed home making gnocchi.


David Southward teaches in the Honors College at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is the author of Apocrypha (Wipf & Stock 2018) and Bachelor's Buttons (Kelsay Books 2020).

DEMON SPERM

by Joan Mazza

GroupsMet

Dr. Stella Immanuel runs Fire Power Ministries,
promotes a dose of  hydroxychloroquine—
sure cure for COVID-19, no distancing
or smothering masks needed.

This doctor dares those in power to offer up
their urine samples, so certain they all
take a daily dose, claims medical experts
use alien DNA in treatments. She prays

in Jesus name for God to take down
all of Facebook’s servers. Don’t you know
the government is run by Reptilians
and other aliens? If you dream of sex—

you’ve encountered an incubus
or succubus, are now contaminated
with demon sperm, known cause
of endometriosis, miscarriage, and gay

desire. A vaccine is being designed
to make you lose religion. Beware:
the liberal media hides these truths. They’ll
implant you, track you, if you let them.

Religion made me lose religion, before my
vaccines for yellow fever and pneumonia.
Blame my dates with demons so generous
with sperm. I await passion, or any gay desire.

Joan Mazza has worked as a medical microbiologist and psychotherapist, and has taught workshops nationally with a focus on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Penguin/Putnam), and her poetry appears in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner (forthcoming), The MacGuffin, and The Nation. She lives in rural central Virginia, where she writes is daily poem.

PUT DOWN THE FISHERMAN

A LITTLE RICHARD CENTO
by Chad Frame





"I’ve been gay all my life and I know God is a God of love, not of hate. How can I (put) down the fisherman when I’ve been fishing all my life?” 
     —Little Richard (December 5, 1932 – May 9, 2020)


If it don’t fit, don’t force it. Can’t help it. Son,
you better watch your step. Papa put me out
of the house, curtains and makeup, cherry-

red, long hair hanging everywhere. All
around the world, the magnolia smells
sweet, and white cotton warm. You said

you loved me, went to the window, peeped
through the blind—a whole lotta shakin’, good
goddamn. How can I put down the fisherman

when I been fishing all my life? Bad luck
baby put a jinx on me—ooh! my soul!—
this land of a thousand dances. You keep on

knockin’, but you can’t hear this jukebox jumpin’.
Keep on knockin’, gonna ring your door
till I break your bell. Go, cat, go. Rip it up,

good golly, heeby jeebies. Uptempo,
directly from my heart, you call it rock & roll.
At regular tempo, you keep on knockin’,

rhythm & blues. You keep on knockin’, baby,
say you only want to dance. Well, alright.
Come on over, baby—but you can’t come in.

Chad Frame’s work appears in Rattle, Mom Egg Review, Barrelhouse, Rust+Moth, and other journals and anthologies, as well as on iTunes from the Library of Congress. He is the Director of the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program and Poet Laureate Emeritus of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, the Poetry Editor of Ovunque Siamo: New Italian-American Writing, a founding member of the No River Twice poetry improv performance troupe, and founder of the Caesura Poetry Festival and Retreat.

VISIBLE THREAT

by Mark Ward

U.S. national-security officials have ordered a Chinese company to sell gay-dating app Grindr, citing the risk that the personal data it collects could be exploited by Beijing to blackmail individuals with security clearances, according to people familiar with the situation. —Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2019. Graphic credit: Hong Kong Free Press.

Because faggotry is still a cold war
causing hard glares and opportunism,

whereas heterosexuals can happily keyswop;
their loins are tinder looking for a match.

So their marriage breaks up, so what?
Rather that than exploitation, nothing

to be ashamed of, unlike the down low
romeos exposing torsos, headless homos

send a message: the unveiling is a risk,
each cropped angle is complicit.

We cannot trust a man
whose flesh is pliable

to not be ruled
by its kneading.


Mark Ward is the author of Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018). His work has appeared in The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Cordite, Assaracus, Softblow, and many more. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry. He is currently working on his first full-length collection, Nightlight.

BECAUSE WE ARE HUMAN

by Kim M. Baker

Written on the Occasion of Pride 2018

I had hoped to compose a new melodic poetic sonata to all my sisters and brothers
Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts
theys and hes and Qs and shes
something glistening and soulful and proud

When what I really want to do is to tell the world this:
Don't tell me, world, that you understand what it must be like to be gay
if you haven't been spat on flipped off had bottles thrown at you
when all you wanted to do was go have a beer and a dance and a hullaballoo

I knew a woman once who documented the stories of Holocaust survivors
And during the training, she was told to never say I understand
Because, of course, she can’t
No matter the depth of her empathy
No matter how many survivors she knew

I want to tell the world:
please don't say you understand because you know someone gay
or watched a show or read a book or took skating lessons with a gay
I don’t need your understanding
What I need is your love

What I need you to know is that gays are spectacular and should be celebrated
not because we are different
but because we are human

We bleed we cry we eat we die of cancer of AIDS of broken hearts
of casting out from families and jobs and housing and other necessary parts of simply living

I mean what I'm trying to say is that gay is amazing and painful
gay is rainbow and see through and black and blue
gay is grace and good embrace and mixed race just like you

Andrew Garfield was correct in his Tony award acceptance:
“Let’s just bake a cake for everyone who wants a cake to be baked”
Not because we are different
but because we are human

Here, let me show you how human we are:

Who here has ever gotten up in the middle of the night to tend to a crying baby?

Who here has ever lost a loved one to cancer or had cancer yourself?

Who here was the class clown in school, ever felt like a fool, ever swam in a pool?

Who here has wished to be different to be normal to be accepted to be loved?

We ARE the world
cake bakers and techno babes
tattooed beauties and bookworms
rabbis and fly girls
families and rebel artists
one-breasted word whisperers and transgender tender hearts
chefs and gardeners
sun-screen wearing beach combers and nifty nude bathers
dog owners and horse riders
fire spinners and bicycle back packers
humble poets and foster parents

Michael Jackson was right
WE. ARE. THE. WORLD.
each gorgeous tortured struggling being

And if I want to be treated more humanely
I must practice the pride of authenticity
I must gift every person I meet with this greeting:

I see you
I see you
I see you

I am you
I am you
I am you

I’ll carry your burden
I’ll speak up for you
I’ll act on your behalf

My Muslim brothers
My prostitute sisters
My immigrant children
My world family of differently abled
struggling to be stable
unfairly labeled
with N words and C words and hate

Michael Jackson was right
WE. ARE. THE. WORLD.
And I will take my place in it
All that I am
All that I am
Just as I am

Kim M. Baker’s poems have been published online and in print and essays broadcast on NPR. Under the Influence: Musings on Poems and Paintings is her first book of poetry. Kim also edits the online poetry journal Word Soup End Hunger that donates 100% of submission fees to food banks nationwide.  A retired writing professor, Kim currently works in Administration at Cotuit Center for the Arts. Kim's play Gin and Ashes will be produced at Driftwood Players in Edmonds, Washington in July 2018. 

REMEMBERING NICOLAI

by Bob Stanley

Stock vintage photo.

I didn’t forget about the old photo of Nicolai,
or what grandpa said about him,
that tears came easily to his eyes,
and that his oils of snow-capped mountains,
with rivers running behind blue pine trees sold well.
Grandpa told me Nicolai loved men instead of women: he always did.
The Nazis had taken him one evening
as he was going out dressed for the theater,
dressed in a long black coat and fedora.
They took him to camp Mauthausen,
robed him in striped pajamas and gave him a pink triangle for a name.
At the end of the war,
the allies liberated the camp,
but Nicolai was found naked and dead,
nothing left of him but a winter’s husk and dead raven’s eyes.

I often wonder looking back,
if Nicolai and the men he loved
were as happy as the men I saw dancing,
on the paper mache float in the Gay Pride parade:
with their asses exposed in black leather chaps,
red jock straps, green feathered boas, lipstick and heels
and sun-tanned smiles?

Grandpa died last week.

So now, looking at this old photo
of Nicolai and Grandpa at the beach as young men
I’m left to wonder
how I shall pour out what is left of my life.


Bob Stanley lives in Pickerington Ohio and works for the Bureau of Motor Vehicles as a civil servant. Personal heroes include brother Joey, brave companion in the fiery walk of the family past and what is to come, and his late mother Lillian who demonstrated both the healing and destructive power of imagination, and his father Jack who instilled the value of hard work.  Bob is currently working on his first novel and his first collection of poetry.  Bob likes to remind people that Franz Kafka and Herman Melville were also civil servants.

MOTHER TONGUE

by Mark Ward

Image source: The New Yorker, July 3, 2017: “The Gay Men Who Fled Chechnya’s Purge.” See also “How a Russian Journalist Exposed the Anti-Gay Crackdown in Chechnya,” The New Yorker, June 10, 2017.

Chechnya 2017

I say nothing. The police interrogate me,
start to break me with electricity. I scream but
say nothing. I will only live if I say nothing.
Each shock dissolves the words they speak,
the taunts they throw, they've always known,
my whole community responds with voltage.


I no longer understand their language.
I am a tourist mixed up in all of this
waiting for my embassy to free me
and be a near miss story I'll tell to the man
who loves me, who will never leave me
like this: eighteen, severed, unkissed. 


I'm put in with thirty others; battery hens,
nowhere to move but for our sins, held
together by tears, the persistence of skin
and a confirmation, unintended by them,
that there are more of us. We cannot sleep so
we speak our secrets since it can't get worse. 


I jolt awake to see the boy beside me staring.
He’s from a few villages over, yet we've never
met. The hand that woke me keeps contact, his lips
open slightly. I can't breathe looking at that. My first kiss
approaches. We're being watched. All I want is this
but I shake my head no; saying nothing, but living. 


I lose track of days, of beatings. The wounds
no longer heal, keep bleeding. I am so thirsty,
I am starving. I cannot concentrate. I hear them
laughing. Or is that me when they ask me
questions. I will not speak. I will not lessen.
I'm dehydrated and delirious. I imagine a life


where I grow up somewhere else and this
would be a conversation, a status update,
an aspect of me. The village boy is dead.
I no longer sleep. I am a corollary. I dream.
There are millions like me, sleeping tonight.
I say nothing but still lose the fight.

Mark Ward is a poet from Dublin, Ireland. With his own poems  featured in many journals and anthologies, Ward founded and edits Impossible Archetype: A Journal of LGBTQ+ Poetry. He has completed two books, a chap called Circumference and a full-length collection called How to Live When Life Subtracts. He has watched every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race many, many times.

GAY PRIDE

by Scott Wiggerman

Images source: Cycle for the Cause

May we bike a wide expanse of untidy sands,
of outliers and isles of desert brush.

May we ride and ride, our eyes primed
to an iota of wild, a mite of wine

among the tumbleweeds and idle browns:
a bind of thriving cacti. Divine!

May we smile and find a vital prize,
a sign in the uncivilized silence,

a blooming lighthouse, a riot of pink fire,
our desired life, our private tribe.

May we ride inspired while our kind expires.
May we rise above the spineless of these times.

Scott Wiggerman is the author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry, Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga, and Bearing the Mask.  Recent poems have appeared in A Quiet Courage, Calamus Journal, Red Earth Review, Rat’s Ass Review, shuf, and Chelsea Station. He is an editor for Dos Gatos Press of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

CHELSEA MANNING, NOT JUST HERSELF

by Devon Balwit

Chelsea Manning tried to commit suicide last month as she was starting a week of solitary confinement at the prison barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., her punishment for a previous attempt to end her life in July. —The New York Times, November 4, 2016. Photo: Elijah Nouvelage/Reuters/Newscom via The Intercept.

The constraints are multiple:
Chelsea jailed inside Bradley,
Bradley penned inside the military,
a deployed soldier inside a perimeter

The voices are multiple:
of wrongness, of rage, of never
belonging, of DADT, her security
clearance no security.

The postures are multiple:
curled over a desk, curled fetal,
clenching fists, crying, screaming,
flipping tables, flipping the bird.

The labels are multiple:
MOS, 35F, PFC, Specialist,
gay, trans, gender dysphoric
traitor, victim, hero, woman.

The reactions are multiple:
bullying, scorn, vilification,
compassion, incomprehension,
indifference, pity, respect.

The wishes are multiple:
to move on from being traitor
or whistleblower, to die, to live,
to be heard, to define herself.

Devon Balwit is a poet and educator in Portland, OR.  Her work has appeared before in TheNewVerse.News and elsewhere, in places such as Unlikely Stories Mark V, Five 2 One, The Rising Phoenix Review, and Rattle.

THE RED MAN WITH CLOSED EYES

by Tanmoy Das Lala

You call them rapists, murderers, criminals, mock
            The silence of a grieving mother, yet
The people in the room break into a riot of applause;
            Many more, behind the protection of a television screen
Do the same –bow their heads in silent nods, in case
            Motion spills into the roving eyes of ideological avenge.
It makes me cringe, makes me afraid, feel
Oddly defeated – at this vicious name-calling
Of the ‘un-Americans’; toxic, this culture of exclusion.

I am an immigrant of color, and gay,
            Who came to this hip of land for a better life, to pursue
A world of dreams; ousted by the jurisdiction
            Of divisive laws upheld by my home country –reinstated
To chain same-sex lovers, like myself. It is this narrative
            Of dislocation that is my common history with your forefathers,
Who did the same, who wobbled
            On the nape of cultural dichotomies, to build for you
A better life. Our uprooting, the confusion of fleet,
            Reconstructions of life’s jagged shards, is not
Your lived experience – and I would never wish it upon you,
            Having known the shame behind the name-calling,
Feeling, often, like an engorged specimen under a microscope.

Your pathological view of the illegals, the aliens, I have come to realize,
Is only a small twig of a much bigger tree,
Rooted deeply in your heart, this phobia of the other; this issue
            Of legality, a timid straw behind your slanted vision
Of a White America.

Do you forget, Red Man, how many fingers of aliens
            Have built the legs of your empire?

Do you realize, Red Man, that law is expensive and
            Entire villages of fugitives would’ve bled
Under the hack of death, had they not made the breathless escape
            To the hopeful shores of this country?

Look beyond this universe of fear you have constructed,
            And notice –that many of us are here to help, to settle
In peace, and love the pillars of a fresh vista of freedom.
            Many of us would fight and fight and fight
For a Nation that isn’t ours, because this Nation gives us hope,
            Much more than our own. If you lift the veil
Of constant suspicion, undo the latches barring our dreams, remove
            The talons biting into our collective strength, you will
See, a majority of us, united before the same flag,
Committed to the cause, not different from yours,
Of together, building an even greater Nation. I wish you would see,
            For once, this alternate reality, beyond
The hollow of your eyes, shuttered so closely tight –
            That anything in the living darkness, to you,
Is an all-consuming threat, a wrench, a narrative of greed.

Tanmoy Das Lala lives in New York City, and writes poetry whenever time permits. His works have appeared in Thought Catalog and Chelsea Station Magazine.

AUTUMN LEAVES

by Lind Grant-Oyeye

Image source: It's okay, to be a flaming homosexual

Like the rainbow, seasons to speak
Like the sun, seasons to tell
Like the moon, tides and seasons to speak
Like the bear, seasons to tell

Like the heart, seasons to dream
Like dreams, colors to wish.


Lind Grant-Oyeye is an Irish-Nigerian poet and has work published in several countries. Her work discusses issues related to culture, social justice and equality.

IT ISN'T EASY BEING FAMOUS THESE DAYS

by Michael Cantor

I wonder how it feels to be inned;                              

named as a closet straight, extinct, passé,

who never played the games you seemed to play.

What if some sleaze-bag-tabloid-bag-of-wind

rescinds all notions that you’ve ever sinned,

and hints and winks and rumors all convey

the message from Manhattan to L.A.

that you’re sober, steady, disciplined.

And if the vicious rumors multiply –

no drugs, no drinks, no series of affairs –

if out is in, and in is forced to lie,

and nothing quite makes sense, and no cares  

about you, just about how you appear,

what impact would this have on your career?

What impact could this have on your career?

You’ve worked so hard to make yourself seem twisted –

the haggard pouts and all night flings, two-fisted

slugs of drugs and booze, a constant sneer –

your photos and your tweets helped engineer

a life whose self-indulgences were listed

as evidence that you, indeed, existed,

if only on the tube, out there, somewhere.

But now it seems exposed as parody:

or so the critics claim – and they should know –

your singer-dancer-fashionista show

is dead as dead can be on Junk TV,

for in a world that dines on out and in,

being inned means you can never win.

Michael Cantor’s full-length collection, Life in the Second Circle (Able Muse Press, 2012), was a finalist for the 2013 Massachusetts Book Award for Poetry.  A chapbook, The Performer, was published in 2007; his work has appeared in The Dark Horse, Measure, Raintown Review, SCR, Chimaera, The Flea, and he has won the New England Poetry Club Gretchen Warren and Erika Mumford prizes.  A native New Yorker, he has lived and worked in Japan, Latin America and Europe, and presently divides his time between hurricane-threatened Plum Island, MA, and drought-threatened Santa Fe, NM. 

GREEN EGGS & MICHAEL SAM

by Chris O’Carroll

They do not like you on the right.
You get their panties bunched real tight.

They do not like you in the game,
But you got drafted all the same.

You’re gay, and hey, you’re now a Ram,
You’re NFL, you’re Sam I Am.


Chris O’Carroll is a writer and an actor.  In addition to his previous appearances in The New Verse News, he has published poems in Angle, Light, Lighten Up Online, Free Inquiry, and The Rotary Dial, among other print and online journals.

WHO AM I TO JUDGE?

by James M. Croteau





I guess it's better,
your tone and all,
but get back to me
when you're ready
to end your claims
to nature's law,
and calls to chastity.
Rescind your stance
on who's "intrinsically disordered"
and I'm all ears.
I think your conscience
needs closer examination--
you have to know
that catechism words
like "grave depravity"
are the nails
in the coffins
of too many Catholic boys.


James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States and loved his mother very much. He has had poems published in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose, New Verse News, and Right Hand Pointing.

HOLY WEEK 2013

by James M. Croteau

Making dinner
with my lover
while NPR covers
gay marriage hearings
in the Supreme Court,
Inconceivable
in my boyhood
when nothing
was covered, or
everything
was covered, hearing
confined to mother’s words
warning of dirty
old men after little boys
in filthy public restrooms.
There will be no Easter
miracle, I’m sure,
I’ll not live to see
marriage in Michigan
where we cut our vegetables,
but simply standing
here with him,
this simple meal we make
is empty tomb enough
for that gay boy in me.

James M. Croteau lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan with his partner of 28 years, Darryl, and their two Labrador retrievers. Jim grew up gay and Catholic in the southern United States. He recently had his first poem accepted for publication in Hoot: a Postcard review of {mini} poetry and prose.