After Seeing Queer Teens Holding Hands on the Sidewalk
I remember he tried to kiss me,
so I blew him.
Cold cover of snow bank.
Memory, like landscapes, can be
transformed
with the right conditions.
That robin, wing-crushed,
on our path back from sledding—
I always saw as lips,
fragile thing that could have been,
what I wrecked.
Now, I see it’s shapeless,
spilled blood,
a thrashing, red feeling,
anger—
not with myself,
not the blameless boy,
but that forest, snow-covered, stark
& unforgiving hour
that stretched across the afternoon,
the years—
knee-deep, but blank
as bone.
Our First Turkey
cooked upside down for two hours
before the thought Where are the legs?
finally won & I took it out & you
palmed the 21-pound bird
with dirty oven mitts.
& didn’t both of us, at some point, feel
face down & drowning? Years of thinking
something’s wrong with us? Look—unfolding
in the dining room: our longest table,
mostly women, gays,
a Last Supper scene that would
have gagged even the wisest men.
Wine swirling our faces pink. The laughter
spreading seat to seat
breaks us, breaks down
our fixed ideas. Turns out—
the turkey’s great.
Maggie says it’s the juiciest she’s ever had
& she’s a turkey freak.
We yell, Cheers! Eat pie. Play a murder mystery
& when the last friend leaves,
you & I, we fall asleep,
in our big blue bed, our naked chests, open
to the sky.
Grant Chemidlin is a queer poet living in Los Angeles. He is the author of What We Lost in the Swamp (Central Avenue Publishing, 2023), a finalist for the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. Recent work has appeared in Palette Poetry, Quarterly West, Tupelo Quarterly, and Atlanta Review, among others.