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ISSLIE

When Chris asked if I would be interested in being a guest editor for
OITM’s First Annual Poetry and Photography issue, I really had no
idea what to expect. Ever an optimist, I thought it sounded like it
might be great. We jotted down a brief call for submissions, wonder-
ing if the deadline would bring us a mad scramble for enough poetry
to fill a couple of pages.

What a delightful surprise it was to get so many poems. And such
wonderfulpoems too. It was truly difficult to choose which to include
here. My criteria? I looked for those that would, separately and to-
gether, speak to some vital part of the experience of being gay, les-
bian, bisexual or transgendered, in this place and in this time. The
poems here reflect a range of ages and backgrounds and stages of life;
they demonstrate a mindful engagement in the dialogue of what it
means to be who we are. (I include one of my own here, because Chris
tells me that it's only fair to exhibit my own work to show what my

I bias might be.)

Please come to the August 10 reading to experience the poems live
and in person. Many warm thanks to all who submitted poetry. You
are all wonderful! And an equal number of thanks to all who are read-
ing these poems. Enjoy.

Cheryl Carmi
July 1998

The staid grass stretches

To the stars, wavers

Like the shadow of water.

The sea’s thousand probing tongues
Inch up sand.

A grisly coven of trees

Wave their frightening arms

At the moon.

The land is severed

Where a poem might end

Had it the body of a continent.
Standing along the swollen shore
My ankles are consumed

By, the steady throb of tides.

I pull words out of my head

To make room for truth.

Soon, dawn will leak

Out a trap door

Behind those mountains

And slide easily

Off my skin. ’
My breath will again

Become something I can believe.

Because night, too, is made of blood
Even the sky must die

Piece by piece.

Tonight, in lung-still air

Behind the shadow pines

A million far—away suns

Burn the blackest part of the sky.

— August Bleed

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photo by Soot Applegate

    
   

through all of this

grey morning

i turned over your picture
from thought to rain

and deeper

in

your wide hips

and angry cigarettes
carving circles in t

a place i don't know

and at last back
again cold and
empty handed
—-all the ways
you reach me still
what lies
between us

is time

i tasted

a fresh grief

of losing you
on T

parted dry lips

— Cheryl Carmi

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/T Postcards  Brother U 

I found the poetry and postcards

my brother sent me,

buried in a shoebox beneath the calm,
yellow chill of antiquity.

The skyscrapers and boardwalks
he called home rise to view

in my palm — torn and wrinkled
panoramic sights of city streets:

Castro, Christopher, Bleecker, Duval—
”Full,” he wrote, "yet so empty.”

I shuffle his happiness

in my hands: still—lifes

of his errant ways scattered before me.

I see him smile in each.

He never called home.

They adored him in neondrenched cities

Where, I know, men dance on pillars
in pink light, tight underwear,
laserbeams growing

into their chests and torsos.

E His poetry confused me: childhood,

masturbation, men together in bed.
Now his life is a blur on my carpet:
"Sis, you must come to New Orleans-

You’d love the French Quarter!” I live
an ordinary life here in Iowa

and my children will grow up

never knowing their lost uncle, going

slowly as I scrub the drawers of my hutch;
a complete resurrection and burial at once
for the boy whose peregrinations

became his family. The last postcard

from Boston, barely legible, inscribed:

”It was the only life I had."—melodramatic,

a quote from a poem. The wake is tomorrow,
someplace Northeast, his remains blown A

on winter snow, freezing until spring

where he'll grow into daffodils and azaleas,
second life, true beauty, reaching toward

the sun in daylight and the moon, safe moon.

— Jeff Walt

(haiku)

Natural Progression

He said "1 love you,”
and stole from me five summers. ‘
So, I found a she.

— Kerry Slora

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