Confessions

Blog, forgive me; I've been neglectful. It's been 4 weeks since my last post. Either my life has been too full to take the time out to post, or the opposite and I have nothing to say to you all. I'll post more. I promise to try better!

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Lately, I've been reading poetry that's less concerned with narrative elements or has less of a situational backbone. Although its influence hasn't yet surfaced, I think it'll be good for my work. I rely so (too?) much on narrative in my poems. I'm also trying to fill the gaps in my reading list, poets I should have long ago read. I'm reading A.R. Ammons and Gertrude Stein for the first time in my life, Dear Reader. Can you believe that?

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I landed a summer job teaching creative writing in NC for gifted teenagers. It's nice to push back unemployment by another 8 weeks.

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I'm participating in another poem-a-day challenge. More than halfway through, it's hard to tell what I will end up working with once the dust settles. So far there's 3 or 4 poems I'm excited about, and if that's all I get out of the month, it will be a month well-spent.

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On Valentines day, Glitter Tongue launched: a collection of 30 love (or anti-love) poems from queer and trans writers. I'm proud to have a poem included.

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Spent a long weekend in Athens with Brandon. We made a gourmet vegan dinner that took hours and hours but was absolutely glorious. We also saw a pair of black bears.

Quinoa, avocado, and sweet potato timbale with roasted tomatillo dressing.

Artichoke ricotta tortellini with saffron cream sauce.

Black pepper shortcakes with blackberry basil sauce and cinnamon cream.

Coming Out

Below is a video of a gay man coming out to his dad over the phone:

I wish everyone who came out could have an experience like this one. Mine wasn't. It was Thanksgiving, 2008. I told my dad I was dating someone and that his name was Ryan. My dad moved to the other side of the couch and turned the television's volume up. Later that afternoon, when my baby cousin spit up over her mom, my dad nudged me and told me that I never did that because I was a swallower. I nudged him back and told him I still was.

Jokes aside, it was a solid two years before my relationship with my parents returned anywhere near a stable place. Since then, coming out has become easier, and is something I do all the time. Whenever I meet someone new, I feel the need to drop the word "boyfriend," to make a joke about being as queer as pink peanut butter, or to act more flamboyantly than what I'm predisposed to, just to signify to that new person who I am. 

In poetry, I find the need to come out constantly, too. Like the Beatles who claimed every song they wrote was a political song, I feel every poem I wrote is a queer poem. For a reader who didn't know me to assume that my work wasn't queer (as our culture teaches us to do) would be to bypass the reason that poem exists. A queer perspective is the center of every poem I write, whether or not that poem confronts love and sex. If I write about a house, it's queer because the domestic sphere is different in a queer poem. If I write about death, it's queer because community and religious rites associated with death are different.

I think poets face coming out often, and not just the queer ones. Most poets stay in the closet (when asked what they do, they answer, "I teach"). We squirrel away in our little communities, and for the most part are ignored by the rest of the world. It was awhile before I could adopt the word "poet" as an identity. Even now it sounds a bit pretentious, a bit turtle-necked and forty-year-old Merlot to me, but coming out as a poet is another thing I'm getting used to.