Poetry Lgbtq

In this deeply intimate second poetry collection, Ocean Vuong searches for life among the aftershocks of personal and social loss, embodying the paradox of sitting in grief while being determined to survive beyond it. Shifting through memory, and in concert with the themes of his novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vuong contends with the meaning of family and the cost of being the product of an American war in America. At once vivid, brave, and propulsive, these poems circle fragmented lives to find both restoration as well as the epicenter of the break.

Nature Poem follows Teebs - a young, queer, American Indian (or NDN) poet - who can't bring himself to write a nature poem. For the reservation-born, urban-dwelling hipster, the exercise feels stereotypical, reductive, and boring. He hates nature. He prefers city lights to the night sky. He'd slap a tree across the face. He'd rather write a mountain of hashtag punchlines about death and give head in a pizza-parlor bathroom; he'd rather write odes to Aretha Franklin and Hole.

Lauded for the power of her writing and having attracted an online fan base of millions for her extraordinary spoken-word performances, Olivia Gatwood now weaves together her own coming-of-age with an investigation into our culture’s romanticization of violence against women. At times blistering and riotous, at times soulful and exuberant, Life of the Party explores the boundary between what is real and what is imagined in a life saturated with fear. Gatwood asks, How does a girl grow into a woman in a world racked by violence? Where is the line between perpetrator and victim?

In this ferocious and tender debut, Chen Chen investigates inherited forms of love and family — the strained relationship between a mother and son, the cost of necessary goodbyes — all from Asian American, immigrant, and queer perspectives. Holding all accountable, this collection fully embraces the loss, grief, and abundant joy that come with charting one's own path in identity, life, and love.

Nico Tortorella's debut poetry collection presents a singular voice honed through years as an actor, podcaster, and advocate, one colored with love, wonder, and endless curiosity. But it is also more than just words - it is a sensuous journey into who we are and how we relate to the world around us, showing how the connections we make are vital to understanding why we are here. Provocative, enlightening, and emotionally charged, all of it is you. is a poetry experience like no other.

Stupid Boy Syndrome: 28 Poems on Love, Lust and Loss is a queer-perspective poetry chapbook on the themes of love and loss, friendship and fall-outs, sex and seduction. At once heartfelt and whimsical, frivolous, and mournful, Stupid Boy Syndrome takes listeners on a whirlwind trip through the many ways that love enriches our lives.

Being traded to the Seattle Vipers has left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, they’re my team, the team I’ve loved and supported since I was a kid, but on the other hand, he’s here. Him. Ant Decker. Infamous NHL bad boy. Right wing to my left. A man who’s made it his sole purpose in life to be better than me.

You Better Be Lightning ranges from close examination of the deeply personal to the vastness of the world, exploring the expansiveness of the human experience from love to illness, from space to climate change, and so much more in between.

In the world of Jericho Brown's second book, disease runs through the body, violence runs through the neighborhood, memories run through the mind, trauma runs through generations. Almost eerily quiet in even the bluntest of poems, Brown gives us the ache of a throat that has yet to say the hardest thing - and the truth is coming on fast.

Jericho Brown's daring book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie? Brown makes mythical pastorals to question the terrors to which we've become accustomed, and to celebrate how we survive.

What feminine part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in this world? At what point does femininity become synonymous with apology? Who hurt the people who hurt you? Let's figure it out. Femme in Public (2017) is the debut poetry collection by transfeminine writer Alok Vaid-Menon including work from 2014-2017. It is a meditation on anti-trans harassment, a ceremony for loss and grief, and an imagining of what could be if we weren’t taught to fear the very things that have the potential to set us free.

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality - the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood - and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces", Smith writes, "some of us all at once."

When we don’t process the pain, where does it go? What is the purpose of being alive when there’s so much suffering? What does it mean to live and die with dignity in a world utterly opposed to it? Your Wound/My Garden is a collection of poetry written during Covid-19 lockdown.

Jericho Brown's daring new book The Tradition details the normalization of evil and its history at the intersection of the past and the personal. Brown's poetic concerns are both broad and intimate, and at their very core a distillation of the incredibly human: What is safety? Who is this nation? Where does freedom truly lie?

Prelude to Bruise is a song from a tightrope, balancing ecstatic existence and the chaos that always threatens to engulf a life on the margins. How do we reckon our past without being ravaged by it? How do we use people, their bodies, to express ourselves? Danger is everywhere in these poems, but never overwhelms them; the poet is always an anchor on the other side. And his story carries us relentlessly along.

From award-winning Irish author Meg Grehan comes an accessible and beautifully crafted middle-grade novel-in-verse about Stevie, a young girl reckoning with anxiety about the many things she has yet to understand - including her feelings about her friend Chloe.

When temptation and forbidden fruit sleeps right down the hall from you... Nasha is the perfect girl for Zena. She's beautiful and sexy, sweet and innocent, with a body made for inappropriate behavior. But there are two obstacles standing in the way: Zena is older at twenty-one, and Nasha is eighteen and still in high school. Worse than that, their parents are engaged to be married. They all live under the same roof and not giving in to the temptation of the sinfully curvaceous Nasha is literally driving Zena crazy. From the curious, longing look in her eyes, Zena can tell Nasha wants her ...

Kai Cheng Thom grew up a Chinese Canadian transgender girl in a hostile world. As an activist, psychotherapist, conflict mediator, and spiritual healer, she’s always pursued the same deeply personal mission: to embrace the revolutionary belief that every human being, no matter how hateful or horrible, is intrinsically sacred.

Sometimes you just want to read about women giving up p*ssy to women who love eating p*ssy. No love story needed. Access Granted. In Black Pudding, Rachel Jordan has taken some of the best sexy lesbian love scenes from several of her books and put them together for this SIN-sational compilation of black women who love black women doing taboo, dirty, forbidden and explicit things. Among the chosen ones in Volume 2: My Wild and Wicked Nights, Lickin' It, Yes, Mistress, Girls Night Out, and Eat My Wife Part II: Veronica's Revenge. Also included: Fat Cat, a sexy and raunchy age-gap short story ...

From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity. With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself - and us - home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America - and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman. Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.