Our Queer Kids
A poem for our LGBTQ+ Youth
Between locker-slammed prophecies and
cafeteria psalms, they provide combinations
to ultraviolet funhouses —
Quantum superpositions of mascara and masks,
dancing through the liminal, on parade.
***
No more pejorative fairies in chrysalis cocoons,
who split our tongues on “oh-be-a-fine-girl” stars,
swallowing silver spoons of mercurial weight;
they’re as ancient as the hills,
yet fresh as morning glories breaking through
our windowsills.
***
Their bodies: sacred temples with washable-painted
owned slurs; they transform into prisms,
catching light stars on the edge of our existential
DNA, rain-coiled in tampered-with tubes
and our plebeian, useless paperweights.
***
In gymnasium diaspora, forbidden bathrooms
scatter among our boomer kin; they flush
through coruscate-coded signals flashing in our skies.
Each closet a universe, each squeal holds a sword —
They’re writing new mythologies, no archangels
came to proclaim.
***
Watch them shed their exoskeletons of shame,
each deadname a new bark etched in
triangle-tattoos, like bioluminescent inks
beneath their party lines.
***
And let them call us mother constellation; let them
call us strange; they’re hard-boned in sneakers,
orchestrating orchid metamorphoses so fast
we try to capture them, but--
***
Each of their heartbeats is a revolution; each of
their breaths, a warfare won,
as we paint ourselves in colors stolen from
Native binaries, in trees, bearing more strange fruit.
***
Yes, they sneak out of our suburban homes, paved
with stones thrown by lottery straights,
and no simple categorizations can be made
anymore. So, summon the supremist of courts.
***
With unshaven hearts and necks and hypotheses, they
loom into beings we never thought to name,
and they keep our dolls safe by unlocking doors —
coming to wash our feet in glitter.
***
The gods are very pleased.
Let us call upon our inner beasts and not
tame Pegasus wings.
***
Accept our queer kids, and find ourselves Here.
About the Creator
Paul Aaron Domenick
“I am mine. Before I am ever anyone else’s.” --Nayyirah Waheed
“Publication is the auction of the mind of man.” --Emily Dickinson
“Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.” --Franz Kafka
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Comments (3)
Very beautiful and inspiring.
Beautiful poem
Paul, this is so amazing, I’m drunk on allusion, blown away by your brilliance.