Queenzenglish.mp3: poetry | philosophy | performativity
As we share the same codified language predilections, we share the same thoughts and perceptions. The Queen’s English is the enemy of the nonnormative.
My Husband Would
There is no shortage of wonder and love in this collection, despite the omnipresence of queer and Jewish generational trauma in the speaker’s communities.
One Less River
One Less River [is] a collection that rewards us over and again for joining its author in not turning away from the difficult truths we face in a world that goes on worlding even when we fail to heed the better angels of our nature.
Not for Luck
Sheffield is emotionally present without sentimentality or clever guile. He offers us a gift of discernment that we can recognize as our own and return to for second helpings and more.
The Best Prey
Quiñones situates desire as the fluxing heart of the collection and imbues its hunger with a Dionysian power and wildness.
We the Jury
Creating sympathy is the poet’s role, and learning to sympathize is our only salvation.
wyrd] bird
Stancek opens a dialectic between the speaker and mystic Hildegard of Bingen that will surface, recede, and resurface throughout the collection.
Small Hours
Photo by Okta Sardianto on Unsplash This evening the sky above the horizon was a purple band but thin and unconvincing, like a bad belief and the ivy climbing the stone buildings was disconsolate and wouldn’t look at me. Disbelief can be astonishment or godlessness, depending and sometimes I feel good and sometimes there’s only […]
Walking at Night
Photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash Remember: headlamps, worn to move through total darkness. We hit the road too late, by the time we pulled into the parking lot, twilight, then even less than that. New Hampshire winter, days done early. I liked being in dusk with you. An arrow of lamplight let me see […]
The Earliest Witnesses
These poems teach us about the sacrilege and sacraments of ingestion, the body our only meager portal to the shining world that isn’t it.