Allyson McOuat I am femme. I know this because my feet hurt. All the time. And I like it. I gain my strength from the power that emanates from my stiletto heels. If my bra is not both itching me and poking me in the heart with a loose sharp metal underwire, then I am not complete. If my panties do...
Reviewed by Latonya Pennington In C.B. Lee’s Not Your Sidekick, Jessica Tran is a non-superpowered teenager who just wants to live up to her superhero lineage. Despite not having powers, she decides to take a paid internship and work for her city’s most notorious supervillain in order...
Interview by Rachna Contractor Nia King is a queer, mixed-race artist and activist from Canton, MA (Wampanoag land), living in Oakland, CA (Ohlone land). She is the author of Queer & Trans Artists of Color, volumes 1 and 2, and the host and producer of We Want the Airwaves podcast. Find more of...
Raven Davis Love (1) How can I set you free my love? a kind of free your scalp feels when you take out your braids each thick black strand of kinked hair dancing amongst wandering white birches it seems like it’s taken you a lifetime to even begin to question why you have never been...
Reviewed by Evelyn Deshane When I teach poetry to my first-year students, they often don’t know what to say. As a genre, poetry seems to be too old, too stiff and formal, or too cavalier and obscene—depending on what student I poll that day. The only other genre that seems as contentious is...
What effect do negatives (“I did not come with a clean slate”, “I do not want to be my father”) and double negatives (“I do not want to not be my father”) have in poetry that confronts secrets and confessions? Lately I’ve been thinking about the photography of Diane Arbus, and how her work has a...
Reviewed by Asam Ahmad A sprawling, expansive memoir that spans two continents and bridges different worlds in the process, Daisy Hernández’s A Cup of Water under My Bed revels in the complexities and the chaos of the queer immigrant experience. This is a book that refuses easy answers and...
Michael V. Smith Strategy 1: Stand in a group on the street corner downtown with a sign: Gay Hugs. Give hugs. Strategy 2: Make more space for outsiders more outside than you. Strategy 3: Love our gay kids. Be kind- ly queer to parents in front of their children. Strategy 4: Organize more gay...
Nikki Donadio [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]I[/mks_dropcap]t was a girl who collapsed on the soccer field. Girl, I kept calling her, with her pink headband and red soccer uniform. Dead at thirty...
