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