Hello! Some Gay Poems now has no semblance of a schedule — I’m queering the newsletter through my unpredictability. But you’re getting two new poems today — enjoy!

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Sarah Burgoyne, this week’s featured guest poet, for a few years now. We met when I took her workshop through the Quebec Writer’s Federation. I’ve been participating in her Poetry Studios over the past two years, and they have been an immense boon to both my poetry and my poetic knowledge. I can’t recommend them enough!

Here’s some more info about Sarah, and a link to her website (where you can find more info about the studios): Sarah Burgoyne is a Canadian experimental poet. Her second collection, Because the Sun was published with Coach House Books in April 2021 and is currently nominated for the A.M. Klein Prize. Her first collection Saint Twin (Mansfield: 2016) was a finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize in Poetry (2016), awarded a prize from l'Académie de la vie littéraire (2017) and shortlisted for a Canadian ReLit Award. Other works have appeared in journals across Canada and the U.S., have been featured in scores by American composer J.P. Merz and have appeared with or alongside the visual art of Susanna Barlow, Jamie Macaulay and Joani Tremblay.

Sarah and I have also become ~poetry friends~, and so decided to undertake a collaborative exercise for my humble little newsletter. You’ll have understood from her bio how lucky I feel to have engaged in this collaboration. Over drinks a couple months ago, we came up with a new form, the Villatel (all credit goes to Sarah for this concise explanation):

The Villatel is a collaborative, experimental take on the Villanelle, with the name deriving from “Villanelle” and “telephone”--a game in which an identical phrase is passed between a group to see how it ultimately changes. Instead of having two refrains repeated word for word throughout, those lines get “translated” between poets, with one writing the first A1 and the second the first A2 line. The second poet then translates (however they see fit) A1 into its second iteration--hence, A1(translated), and so on, switching “translator” each time. The lines between the refrains are completed last to forge connections (or not) between them. Rhyme scheme is preserved but slant, or annihilated. An important part of the Villatel is that it takes its cues form improv--mistakes are worked with, rather than reversed.

(Invented by Misha Solomon and Sarah Burgoyne in October 2021)

We intend to become very rich through the use of the form, like so many poets before us. If you’re interested in using the form, simply place your most treasured possession in an envelope and mail it to one of us. (Jk please play our little poetry game for free and share your results!)

Sarah and I composed two Villatels during a fast and furious Google Doc collab. Without further ado, here are the fruits of our labour, “Emollience” (read by me) and “Legion” (read by Sarah).

EMOLLIENCE

I remember hand cream at the least convenient times,and so live dryly. Remember how my mother’s skin was always wet andhow she said, “This is a good place to begin, perceiving the moon,

its beauty and smoothness, its Pantagruelian allure, andthe tides, always the tides.” Each time I bake an angel food cake,a bowl of egg whites make a shiny mountain in the memories of

her recipes, passed down to me like sunshine through a dusty skylight.It’s a place I dream of going, up through the skylight to her hallowed moon.When I see the moon, I tell her it’s the end

of suffering, or the beginning, since pointing a finger is the closest we can getto mutual intelligibility. I try to tell her that I’ve met a man,he wants my yolks but I’ve already tossed them down

in a small silver bowl, to preserve for an unknown futureneither one of us will see. Each dawn, his rough kiss wakes me, andthe sun shines, a day moon, as night pulls up its ladder

and I see it, I see him, and my dry skin aches with joy.In her recipe for egg tarts, my mother reminds me thatthe yolks are suns nestled like stones. I dream of laddersand then the starlit heat sets fire to the final rung.

LEGION

I have been trying to overtake the future, ensnare it likean insect in paint, in the numbed toxicity of an apartment’s early days.But yesterday’s a bit of cheese and I am a mouse

the landlord refuses to exterminate. The moving vanis a time machine that carries me gladly away. It propels me futureward.My time machine has a built-in net but all I catch

are crushed moths drawn to the headlights, unaware of momentumuntil awareness ends. In their stead I chew up my old cottons;what was left to rot and ferment becomes what I love:

natural fibers returned to their most natural state.The moths wear their wings like the gowns of immolating monks.In the mirror I’m repeated infinitely and I can’t escape

their fiery albs. All my selves are effigiesmeant to be given in the name of something, but I’m prodigal.You’ll find me in the slop trough, if the pigs don’t get me first

or even if they do — their appetites are no match for my infinite regress.This is not your life, they tell me. Hang your mirrors in Paradise. I see me, I see me, I see me, I see me, I see me, I see me, and I see thatthe abyss is a lily, its anthers flares piercing my infinite, precarious lives.

Tata for now! Thanks for reading and/or sharing and/or subscribing. And infinite thanks to Sarah for the collaboration and feature. Buy Sarah’s new collection — I can’t recommend it enough!

Thanks for reading Some Gay Poems! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com

So when I said once every two weeks, I lied. Let’s say once a month!

I’m very excited to have my second guest contribution this week — more on that later/below. If you’d like to contribute to a future “issue,” just shoot me an email by responding to this email.

First up, my own poem this week, which was inspired by a prompt in a workshop I’m currently taking (thanks to Carolyn Marie Souaid, the workshop leader, for the inspiration).

“Long-time” “fans” of SGP might be able to figure out to which photo I’m referring in the poem below — it’s been featured in a previous issue ;).

What Was I Doing New Year’s Eve?

I wish you’d seen the photo,you’d know what I meanwhen I sayI’ve never been more me,when I tell youI wish I had still that sparkly goldhat, too big for my little head, that Iwish my baby teeth had never fallenout, even the canine stained by cranberryjuice, that I wish every NewYear’s Eve could make my eyesshine like that, shine like the hat, did Imention the hat?, shine straight intothe lens, outshine the fancy potteryin the background, distract from my littlefist, clamped as tight as it is now, my nailsdigging the same groove in one of the linesof my palm, my nails cut short and roundstill, always with scissors, but not with mymother’s mother’s scissors, I lost them on a trip,and not by my mother, but she still would, if I let her.

I wish you’d call my mother,she’d bring the photo andshe’d cut my nails.

SGP’s guest contributor this week is Brian O’Neill.

Brian O'Neill is a Montreal-based writer and teacher. His work has appeared in Event, Plenitude, and subterrain. You can find him on Instagram @bconeill and on Twitter @brianconeill.

I’ve had the pleasure of being in a number of workshops and writing groups with Brian, as well as of calling him a friend! His fiction writing is amazing (click the Plenitude link in his bio above for a spooky and sexy story), as is his poetry, which I’m honoured to feature here.

This somewhat ekphrastic poem is inspired by both Frida Kahlo (specifically her Wounded Deer) and Sylvia Plath, who were rough contemporaries. Brian’s reading of his work adds to the experience, so don’t forget to listen!

Arrowsby Brian O’Neill

Arrows in your hand and quiverI could charge at you with my antlersstampede over the broken branchesI could retreat to the denser woods orrun to the beach, where there are no obstructionsto my swift sprintMy doe eyes look directly into yourstransfixed by your tweed flap capyour raised armthe glint in your eyesWho could resist a brute like you?

Arrows piercing my bodymy hind legs, my back, my ribs, my neck, my heartUnpanicked, I remain plantedin the naked clearingThe stormy sky will clear before longyet too late

Such is my fateI gave myself to youthough I saw the trophies on your walland your satchel full ofarrows

Will you mount my head atop your mantle?Will you barbecue my tender meat,marinating it in red wine and olive oilwith dashes of garlic and thyme?Will you skin my hideto use as a rugand carve my vertebraeinto horns and flutes and drums?Or will you sharpen my bones with your bayonetto make more arrows?

Thanks for reading and/or listening and/or sharing and/or subscribing!

Don’t forget to reach out if you’d like to gaily contribute.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com

Some Gay Poems is back, officially! Thanks all who read and responded to my piece in Fruit Journal a couple weeks back. If you missed it, here’s a link:

Getting back to regular SGP programming now — I’ll be sending out these ~newsletters~ slightly less often, likely once every two weeks. I’ll also be featuring guest contributors as often as possible, so please do not hesitate to reach out (just reply to this email!) if you’d like to contribute a piece.

I’m so excited to have my first guest contribution this week — more on that later/below.

First up, my own poem this week, which owes its inspiration and format to Victoria Chang’s incredible collection Obit (and to my dear friend/poetry “colleague” Sasha Manoli for suggesting the prompt).

Obit

after Victoria Chang

Misha Solomon—died on August 16, 2021, under the sole of his own sandal. He thought he was killing the wasp that had just stung him under his middle toe. But he died with that wasp. As a child, he pet bumblebees as they gathered pollen, their legs becoming thick with flower dust. His parents encouraged him to rub one gentle finger along their fuzzy backs. Wasps are not fuzzy, but they are nonetheless important pollinators. We pet that which is inferior to us: a dog, a lover soon to be dismissed, an upset child. The wasp panicked, it was caught between foot and insole. Misha brushed the wasp out from under his foot, watched it seize upon the sidewalk, and then crushed it and himself before it could fly away. Maybe it wouldn’t have been able to fly away, the damage could already have been done. But it’s not a mercy if the motive is revenge. Metamorphosis is a kind of death, we lose ourselves when we lose our superiority. Misha died a panicked wasp.

SGP’s first guest contributor is Daniel Baylis.

Daniel Baylis is a writer, photographer, and adventurer. For the past decade, he has embarked upon unusual global expeditions that have included hiking across Israel/Palestine, cycling across India, and writing poetry in Cuba. His book, The Traveller: Notes from an Imperfect Journey Around the World, documents a yearlong quest to be helpful in twelve diverse corners of the world. Daniel's most recent project is a collection of poetry, entitled A Submission to Love.

Daniel and I met last week after having followed each other on Instagram for a little while. (Daniel and I are each fun to follow, you should try it!) It was wild to meet a new person in person (outdoors, natch) after so much pandemic time. I was so honoured that Daniel was interested in contributing a poem to this Substack — his collection is a beautiful joy to read (order it!), and my favourite piece is featured below (and in Daniel’s own voice in the recording that accompanies this ~issue~).

Thanks for reading and/or listening, y’all! See you in a couple weeks. And please reach out to submit/contribute/collaborate!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com

Hi all! I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling Some Gay Poems #22!

Thanks for sticking with me for 22 weeks of poems. When I started this project, I expected my output to be brash and explicit, but it’s taken a turn for the decidedly domestic. Who knew!

It’s been fun, and I think I’ll come back to this Substack in a few weeks, but I’ll be taking a bit of a summer break after this week. I am trying to work on not turning joy into obligation, and so I’m freeing myself of this completely voluntary obligation for a little while. See you in a few weeks! Cry for me! Start a fan club in my absence!

There’s a Skunk in the House

At 2am, the smell of skunk so strong it wakes me upand wakes him up.

Half asleep, he frets,he hopes the skunk is not inside our home.

Half asleep, I hopethe skunk is indeed inside our home.

What a story that would be:At 2am, the smell of skunk so strong it wakes me upand wakes him up. Half asleep, he frets,he hopes the skunk is not inside our home. Half asleep, I hopethe skunk is indeed inside our home. I wanderto our back door and find a skunk, terrified and half dead.The skunk had been attacked by a dog or a large cat,sprayed its assailant outside and then wandered upinto our apartment. I wrap the shivering animal in a toweland place it in the bath and tend to its wounds with a damp clothand run my index and middle fingers along its white stripe, separatingthem as the stripe splits into two, and the skunk is both revived and soothedby my careful ministrations and smacks its lips in contentment and nestlesinto my waiting arms. I’ve been preparing for this my whole life, ever sinceI held a skunk kit at a nature camp and it nipped me but I just kept holding ituntil it calmed down and nestled into my hand.

But no, he needn’t fret,I needn’t hope. Nothing happensat 2am, not anymore.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com

Photos of my remedied toe fungus and healing thigh cyst are available upon request only.

Jublia

The anecdote is that last night I said to my boyfriend:“guess what time it is?” and he said:“time to put on your toenail fungus medication?”and I said:“yes but what else?”and he said:“time to put a hot compress on your thigh cyst?”and I said:“yes but what else?”and he said: “time to give me a kiss?”and I said:“sure but what else?”and he said:“time for you to start the dishwasher?”and I said:“you got it!”

The poem is in there, somewhere, I’m sure. You may think the poem is about love, and its endurance in the face of fungiand routineand enflamed cysts.

But what if the poem isthat I start the dishwasherevery other night,around 9:30 PM. Before I do,I scour the apartmentfor any lingering mugsor tiny bowls,the kind my boyfriend usesto eat tiny portionsof dry cereal.These bowlsare really tiny,so tinythat they fit verticallybetween the smallest rungson the upper rackof the dishwasher.

Or,no,what if the poem isthe odd time the dishwasher fills up in a single day.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com

I’m late again, and this is a longer poem. Buckle up!

Post-modernity is of course a euphemism for internalized homophobia.

In 1971, my grandfather bought a country house in Morin Heights and in the house was a ceramic statue of a turquoise unicorn. The unicorn is at rest, legs folded underneath itself, nestled on some clouds. Or, not quite at rest, but posing, its head held high and its chin tucked in to its chest, its twisted horn perpendicular to its brow, perpendicular to its snout. The unicorn has a luscious mane, hair piled high as the shiny pompadour on an Elvis Presley wax recreation. The unicorn’s ass is surprisingly human and shockingly well-defined, two juicy cheeks beneath a tiny tufted tail. The unicorn is covered with a pattern of textureless cracks, so smooth and regular that they appear superimposed, a filter, a kitschy effect.

This effect is an example of crackle, the technique by which a spiderweb of fine cracks is created in a ceramic glaze. Crackle is distinct from crazing, which is the same thing, but by mistake. The complete answer to an old-fashioned SAT analogy question would read manslaughter : murder :: crazing : crackle. Maybe the cracks are in fact an example of crazing, and maybe the statue was left behind in the Laurentian chalet because of its defect, or maybe it was left behind without forethought.  

In the five decades since my grandfather accidentally acquired the ceramic statue of a turquoise unicorn, unicorns have become gay. This particular unicorn might be very Hunt of the Unicorn chic, proud and fierce, but its also by its innate unicornness PROUD and FIERCE, honey, a somehow symbol of corporate queerness. In the five decades since my grandfather accidentally acquired the ceramic statue of a turquoise unicorn, I have both become gay and acquired the ceramic statue of a turquoise unicorn. This particular unicorn lives in the home I share with my gay boyfriend.

I hesitated before acquiring the ceramic statue of a turquoise unicorn, before accepting my parents’ offer to have it fill a previously unfilled corner in our apartment. I hesitated because intention is difficult to express in interior design without a plaque that reads “We Are Gay but This Unicorn Is Not.” I hesitated because one of the many curses of post-modernity is a refusal to be on the nose.

They removed analogies from the SAT, but I’m only comfortable with crazing. Manslaughter carries a lesser sentence. I leave things behind in error.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com

Before we begin, a content warning for some violent imagery in these week’s poem.

This poem is late! It’s late because I was very busy fêting Queen Victoria (for my non-Canadians “fans,” today is Victoria Day in Canada / Journée nationale des patriotes in Quebec). Here’s a photo of my mother and me with Queen Elizabeth II to compensate.

How to Love

Before going into battle, Iask the gods for guidance andwhat is love if not the penultimatebattle, preceding only death?

In battles past, the gods have advised meto sink my both fists into my enemy’s chestand extract their beating heart and eat theirbeating heart or to sink one fist down my enemy’sthroat and to punch my other fist up my enemy’sanus and to tear their heart in two inside their bodyand to eat the half that comes outstill beating.

I was surprised to see the entrails of my enemy(I have many) spell out the gods’ guidancefor this penultimate battle, this battle for love.I was surprised to see the gods suggestthat I should offer my opponent (for in this battlethere are no enemies, only opponents) noresistance, I should allow myself to be guidedby them and by the gods.

And so, my hands still tacky with organ,I began to date. I began to bat my eyes,to rub one foot in the clay-red dirt whilelooking down and smiling, blushingclay-red, to expose my chest and openmy throat and my anus to my opponent’sfist.

I came to know the fists of many opponents,to know the hair upon their knuckles,the strength of their grip, to know whichhalf of my heart would come out beating.I came to crave the empty cavity,the soundless unbeating of mydehearted chest.

I knew to trust the gods and knew thatthey knew that I was winning the battleeven if my heart lay in the hands ofa faceless nameless horde of opponents.

I came to hope the warnever wouldbe won.

Thanks very much to André Babyn for the prompt that inspired this poem!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com

This week, no stanzas and long sentences. Rapid-fire connections. Tigers and snakes. Oh my. Would you swipe right? Sorry, I’m taken.

Thanks to Kayla T. for the photo many moons ago.

Tigers I Have Known

When I was ten, I had a pet snake named Tiger, he had black and orange stripes, just like a tiger, he ate mice that we kept in the freezer and that we had to defrost in warm water in a big metal cup before feeding to Tiger, before grabbing the wet squishy mouse by the tail and shaking it above Tiger so that he thought he was hunting. When I was thirteen, I went to a sleepaway zoo camp in Orono, Ontario, and I cried every night because I was homesick, but one day we all sat in a circle and took turns holding and petting a tiger cub that the owners of Jungle Cat World were hand-rearing. When I was twenty-three, I got a tattoo of the tiger from Henri Rousseau’s 1891 masterpiece Tiger in a Tropical Storm or Surprised! on my upper chest, its tail loops around my right clavicle and after I got it I started using shirtless pictures on dating apps because I thought the art tattoo made me look sexy-smart and not sexy-smutty. Last week, the tiger of an accused murderer went missing in Houston for almost a week, which is where the friend who was with me when I got the tiger tattoo is from originally. Henri Rousseau never saw a real tiger, never left France, but painted jungles with learned passion. Four years before he died, my mother’s brother wrote a note to his parents asking for a pet snake, he did get a snake, but it wasn’t named Tiger, and he never met a real tiger, but he did meet a cheetah, because my grandfather rented one for his Bar Mitzvah.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com

This week, a love sonnet, can you imagine? It’s spring and things are shitty but in a hopeful way? Love!

Pillow Talk

I understood the words he said in French,which is our language though it wasn’t mine,but fluency did little still to quenchthe flames of doubt as I lay there supine.I may have dreamt the simple, common phrase:the pronoun, the elision, and the verb.I wanted written proof, communiqués,a full-length feature or at least a blurb;an affidavit deposed under oath,attesting that my ears did not deceive.The other time I heard this I was loathto add aussi when I would surely leave.This time, staying was a fait accomplias long as I had bel et bien compris.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com

This week’s poem is about a groundhog I saw this weekend. Here’s a photo as proof:

Consider the Groundhog

We walk through Mount Royal Cemetery,we two alone save for the thousands of bodiesand a plump, whistling groundhog.

The groundhog scurries into its burrow,then pops its head back out from a hole dug above a late-nineteenth-century coffin.

I wonder if the groundhog gnaws on the coffinto keep its incisors in check. I wonder if the groundhoghas ever reached bone. I wonder if the groundhoghas birthed litters within the safety of the coffin, fourblind chucklings nestled in the ribcage of a Fatherof Confederation.

My parents told me that Mount Royal is an extinct volcanobut that’s not true: there was magma once, but no lava.

Here are the connections to be made: we’ve come to the cemetery,a place of death, to be apart from other living people, whom we see as vectors of death due to the ongoing pandemic.In this cemetery, we find a living rodent unaware that its homeis among the dead. The cemetery is on a hill that I once thoughtwas dead, but was in fact never alive.

The groundhog’s fur is surprisingly resplendent, a gorgeous redwith a prismatic reflection in direct sunlight. The groundhog’s cryis resonant and pure, a pitch pipe played for a soprano.

Here are the questions to be asked: Who will make their homein the ribcage of the groundhog’s young? And what willthey tell their children of this home?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit somegaypoems.substack.com