I AM THE QUEER YOU HATE
poems by Joanna C. Valente
i am the queer you hate
i don't choose
who to love, don't have anyone
i don't love. love is not love
without self
less, without conditions that lack
conditions. love is not rare
like a book that hasn't been
published in years, like the spine
all bent and shifty like a love
lost
and forgotten, beaten to submission
so it hardly looks like
love at all. that is not the kind
of love i want. that is not the kind
of queer i am. i am rule–
less, empty barrel, no shots
fired. i just want the thing
that makes your brain fire, that makes
your body mad with rage until
the night sky is cake batter, a mother
who hurt you
by not accepting all of you
until it's too late and both of you
have died
to understand
each other. i want the kind of love
that ends only in death
and be the kind of queer no one
quite understands,
the kind that has no home,
no spells to cast
except the spells of a kind
we have forgotten, no queers
without the queering of reality
a space in a space without
space. no one chose this, no one
would choose this but i have chosen
to remain
because not everything has to end
in death.
•
I TELL YOU I WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE BUT PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME ALONE
& one day I know a child
will ask me how a body
can be so alone, so alive
separated & thwarted
gossamer wings
into another kind of death.
How can you lie to me?
They will ask me over and over again
because I can’t bear
to tell the truth.
They don’t want you baby.
They don’t want you.
But I made this for you.
I made you for you.
;;
I watch a man on the subway
write to Sofia. Happy birthday,
he says, I haven’t seen you in years.
I wonder what they did
to each other.
;;
A Williamsburg cop told another cop
a secret. Handed him coffee like a lamb
covered in menstrual blood.
It’s okay, he said, you went
to the academy
no one can blame you
for not liking it.
No one can say anything.
;;
How many of the sirens are real?
The city before
eventual destruction, your birth
&
humans without homes or countries
and when you ask, why borders
no one answers.
;;
Anything about betrayal reminds me of you.
;;
A man texts his mistress
on a plane, metal boxes
containing everything but
what he intends.
;;
Your head is full of liquid and heartbeats like death
metal and you aren’t sure if you are falling
or wanting to fall and where your body ends in space
and you can’t hear anyone and you are just constantly
in the way. You are tired of being in the way. You are
tired of being.
;;
I want to live different lives.
;;
Some mornings are hard to breathe because you hate the body you’re in.
I made the choice to lose my voice
because I don’t want to be #relevant.
I only knew you in the dark
& you grabbed
the sky for me and anointed me
christened me into something blue
& freezing.
What was there after?
What was after we?
No sky no legs no sound.
After you ate the ocean and gave me the sky,
were we floating deep in the lake, reverse
like speech?
Reverse brakes, engines to other empires.
Only ultraviolet light and neon colors
we couldn’t eat or touch or know.
You made me the most beautiful star
I couldn’t touch.
You have the star, the star has
something inside you.
We can’t touch it.
;;
I was swimming in a giant pool
Alone.
No moon, no gates, no lines.
Above the pool was a glass window
where a man and a woman sat.
Sometimes the man looked down at me,
watching. Sometimes the woman did too.
What lives are we living? What lives are they inside?
They aren’t mine.
;;
The wind was blowing
in my face and my hair last night and I was so tired.
I hovering over my body,
trying to exist. I felt free.
;;
Your body
is a special, beautiful hell
liminal, transitional
many spaces.
There are all of these people around you
breathing in half-empty, half-full,
and you are usually alone.
;;
Alienlike crimsons, empty chairs.
I only remember you.
None before and none after in the black silence of night.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams, The Gods Are Dead, Marys of the Sea, Sexting Ghosts, Xenos, No(body) (forthcoming, Madhouse Press, 2019), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault. They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes Poetry and the senior managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Them, Brooklyn Magazine, BUST, and elsewhere. Joanna also leads workshops at Brooklyn Poets. joannavalente.com / Twitter: @joannasaid / IG: joannacvalente / FB: joannacvalente