GLOW | QUEER POETRY FEATURE: R.Y.R.

Happy August queer babies! Welcome to the end of the summer, but the beginning of something much bigger, fibrous, more permanent. We took a break from GLOW for the month of July but are back louder and queerer than ever. It’s with great excitement that we will be featuring not one but TWO queer poets each and every month for our GLOW series. That means every 2 weeks you get to go on a hot literary date with a new poet of our choosing and a small batch of their fresh new poems.

In the spirit of queer politics and privacy & not being out to the whole of our complicated families, this month’s feature contributes under the name R.Y.R.

Below, you will find three of her poems.

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lament

I don’t have a name to call you
I walk up and down the dark avenues
and the air is thick with growing things
the last flail of bloom
before the spring mellows to summer
and my eyes grow used to the violence of green

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nothing good happens after midnight
​
I stayed too long As if the night would turn a corner and there She would be standing Backlit with
holiday lights

My shoulders too broad In my used shirt I watched the only queer femmes at the party Find every
excuse to muddle their breath in the other’s

I realize queers Touch each other that way (Like the motorcycle seat and its rider; Like an infant
tonguing a new strange fruit) because the ability to give & receive love Is always blooming to us
That is to say, Underripe and do we ever quite arrive?

I left slightly after one friend but slightly before the other And every self of me always walks
home alone

Too lonely to leave Too sad to stay

& What was our little girl’s answer?

Eat a little Try to sleep Write a poem Which is what you were going to do Before the desire to
bump against someone you were meant to bump against Took you over and walked you up those
stairs

As it walks you to every hard horizon As it buys you the hopeful dress As it turns all the lights in
your apartment on at 2am

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Aliens, I’m Ready, Take Me To Your Planet
​
Tonight, each dark shape is a dead animal.
On the roof, I saw the corpse of a pug at my feet.
Then a deer, its legs dangling over the ledge.

I don’t want you, I want your peaches,
The ones we ate in your wide white bed.

The bitter skin
Split between my teeth.

My whole July turned sweet.

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​R.Y.R. is a writer/public speaker/qwoc who lives in California and misses the summer thunderstorms of her Midwest hometown very much.