Photos this page by Scot Applegate
‘ Pride ‘98 _

G 

I've spent years afraid of it,
but today my body makes sense.
We wake from an afternoon
nap——5 pm——the sun behind
the post office across the street.
Still dreamy, I watch her

rise, stretch. She steps to

the window, looks down.

I move toward her,

stop at her back,

slip hands around her waist,
lips on her neck.

She holds out her palms-

I fill them with my fingers.

Outside the twilight is
peopled with grotesques,
children in masks, in capes,
candy bags at their sides,
their bloody faces

bobbing down the sidewalk.
The moon hangs itself-

fat, yellow, zero.

—Cathy Resmer

.-.AI 0:;

I am holding your hand.
I am touching your face.
I am conscious of their stares.

But I never doubt this.

I never regard their words

as more than the rain that pelts our faces;

as more than the mosquitoes that we bat away and squash,
that draw blood and interrupt our courting.

We dodge the puddles.
We get wet all the same.
We hide out with the straight couples under the canopies.

You are smiling.
Raindrops kiss your freckled cheeks
and I finally realize,

no look or words or sneer or stare
could ever be greater than this truth.

—Kerry Slora

  
 
  

 

we're not the kind

they'll clone: tongue studs
tattoos, florid hair — daughters
of anomaly stepping out
together _/
under flags

that spell

our dissidence

we are the Bic people, a nation's
shame: don't ask '
don't tell. first to be jettisoned
in a contrary wind:
- juden raus
niggerspic kikedyke

our teens forced to cut

their eyes

at selves

seen in mirrors

silvered

by an acid bath

of hate. a monster

tlinches ’”
back at them. no wonder
they'll carve self

—portraits on skin, gouge
channels that slice, release
pain

impacted as a wisdom tooth
bursting against bone

grown, some scourge
with too much vigour. pick

at their own wounds. many, too many

suck poisons stuff blood soak lungs

snort swallow shoot powders potions pills any:
thing

that dilutes

mood. anything

to feel

anything to feel

good

some will succumb

but the lucky

or the perverse

refuse to fold

b4 the fact

of the jack

—boot. the straight jacket
parents who slam doors

then change the locks. the lock
downs. the surgical instruments
that snip, clip

mow broad swathes

of mayhem

into the matter

of their minds

a curettage
on wrongthink

daddy tries to
fuck her
out of it

Viv, inviolate now

in black leather

will permit no strange
touch

touch shocks

shoots napalm

down scarlines -

Jess, avatar of gender
was birthed at a midpoint
in a bipolar world. persistent
insistent she's excised
the extraneous

given self a body

that makes a better match
with mind

here, there, hand-in-hand . I
in summertime promenade

women reconstitute self. hammer

new codes. sing songs

to honor

our war dead, those gravely

wounded. keepers, sharers, we're mid-wives

we give each other

suck touch‘

the untouchables ‘til one day

readied, a woman picks up

a drum

beat mounts  ~
a bike & steps out

~ to lead

the whole
damn
parade