you say
you’ll love me
until they throw
dirt on my face

that after you’re gone
your ghost will go on loving me

sneak up behind me in the kitchen
spook the cats
yell “boo” at my mis-matched outfits

I laugh
but I can’t see myself without you

I only see us at 90
with bags on both shoulders
tugging on the collars of our elderly cats
cackling like school girls

I only see us
two little ghosts
thumb wrestling in the dark
“ghost fucking” on our second honeymoon
scaring life into the living;
still shaking bones with our laughter

you say
there aren’t enough words
to say ‘I love you’

but if you plan
to love me into ghost-hood
there’s no need for more words

Indigo is a sex blogger, educator and smut writer. She is the creator of Indigo’s Theory (www.indigostheory.wordpress.com), a blog about her experiences as a poly queer black women navigating the BSDM/Kink Community in New York City and beyond. Indigo also writes a column called “Indigo’s Poly Beginnings” for Fearless Press, an online magazine about the intersection of life and sex. Her column focuses on the development of her polyamorous relationship with a partner Sara Vibes – International Ms Leather 2011, as well as her experience in the leather women’s community. Alongside her partner, she has taught workshops on sexuality and BDSM practices at Dark Odyssey: Fusion, International Mr. Leather 2011 and the LGBT Center in New York City and is a faculty member for Kink Academy, an online education resource for the BDSM community. Indigo’s erotic writing has been featured in Salacious Magazine Issue #2 and she is a contributor to “The Perverts of Color Anthology” to be published in 2012.

View the rest of Queer Love Poetry Week:

Queer Love Poem Day #1: Not Having a Smoke with You by Lillie Craw

Queer Love Poem Day #2: Two Poems by Blaine Marchand

Queer Love Poem Day #3: porch kitty & this too by Alysia Angel

Queer Love Poem Day #4: Kite String and Keys by Blythe Baldwin

Queer Love Poetry Day #5: Valentine to My Unknown Lover by Linda Lenzke

Queer Love Poetry Day 6: Studies for a Poem About Seduction by Jill Leininger

Queer Love Poems Day #7: sweet boy by sossity chiricuzio

rolling together
tangled in kissing
and a teenage feeling
giggling
between the sighs
nerve endings alight
like those first brushes
with lust
and possibility
just this side
of gambling
on vulnerable
feeling the
electric tingle
that fills the air
like ozone
when role play
lays in reach
so easy to
slip into character
with you

the gift you give
not just the rush
of pleasure
outlining every move
of you
against me
but how your
teenage boy
gives me back
my flesh
with the game of
can i please?
every time you ask
you erase
shame soaked
fingerprints
of the ones
who never did
never cared
who grabbed
and gobbled
like i was fast food
wolfing me down
no thought for my flavors
or pleasure
in the meal
leaving me
the empty hole
that was all they saw.

you, sweet boy
convince me
soften me
wait and wait
for the yes
until i am soaked
seduced
by sincerity
and sweetness
falling into your hands
like ripe fruit
held in your mouth
like ambrosia
and your eyes
reflect beauty
gazing at me
waiting
waiting
for my yes
not begging
but softly pleading
for what desire
promises
and your tender heart
delivers
open handed
eager
respectful

copyright 2011 sossity o chiricuzio
Find more here: http://www.stirthejuice.com

Previous Poems:

Queer Love Poem Day #1: Not Having a Smoke with You by Lillie Craw

Queer Love Poem Day #2: Two Poems by Blaine Marchand

Queer Love Poem Day #3: porch kitty & this too by Alysia Angel

Queer Love Poem Day #4: Kite String and Keys by Blythe Baldwin

Queer Love Poetry Day #5: Valentine to My Unknown Lover by Linda Lenzke

Queer Love Poetry Day 6: Studies for a Poem About Seduction by Jill Leininger

by Jill Leininger

I. Milkpod
Indiscriminate tips.  Poised on letting go,
the fibrous innards loosen and expel

their white breath with the wind: come
and rest, the marsh’s willing

hush will tuck you in.

II. Wool

Walking through the gift shop full
of blankets for other people’s children,

the little animals fascinate us

and you wish aloud for someone to whom
you could give the lamb,

glancing at my belly, which shows
for no good reason

other than to make
you look.
III. Nest

Settle in.  There is a cup to hold
everything.  Yet,

you’re determined to cast more—
as if to say that the possibility of containing

more made more.  My urge
to take you into nature

distracts you from your task,
though never enough;

you’re gathering weeds.

IV. Country

It’s the day of daylight savings,
foreign to you

and your country.  Rocking
on the library veranda, you finger

the Chinese poet’s five-beat bliss.
The sun is on the meadow

and I recognize the name
Lushan, which is closer to you

than this. It’s as if we’d swallowed
that hour, waiting

happily, finding excuses to climb
the green silence.

Is this the country? you ask.  By that time,
I’d have said yes to anything.

Jill Leininger’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in cream city review, Poetry International, and the Harvard Review Online.  “Roof Picnic Skies, New York,” a chapbook of prose poems, is also available from dancing girl press. Find her on Twitter @congressoffish

Previous Poems:

Queer Love Poetry Day #1: Not Having a Smoke with You by Lillie Craw

Queer Love Poetry Day #2: Two Poems by Blaine Marchand

Queer Love Poetry Day #3: porch kitty & this too by Alysia Angel

Queer Love Poetry Day #4: Kite String and Keys by Blythe Baldwin

Queer Love Poetry Day #5: Valentine to My Unknown Lover by Linda Lenzke

by Linda Lenzke

Whoever you are, whatever you do, wherever you live,

whenever you’re ready, however scared you may be,

I am waiting for you, my new love. I try to recognize you

in the faces of the unfamiliar, or in the eyes of friendly others.

Perhaps I’ve already met you at the bookstore, or the

Farmer’s Market on the Square, our hands reaching for the same red pepper.

Were you the woman two rows in front of me

in the movie theater?  I watched you, then the film.

Maybe we’re friends; belong to the same group,

pass each other on the road during our daily commute.

You may not yet have arrived in town; the new kid at work;

The neighbor moving into my building,

whose ripped cardboard box I rescue before hitting the ground,

our eyes meeting for a second

in recognition of something important, strangely familiar.

We ready ourselves for each other each day in our meditations and reverie,

conversations with friends, when they ask, what will your next girlfriend be like?

I ponder you. I wonder. My curiosity distracts me in my work, sometimes

becoming the purpose of my play, inspiration for poetry.

I write about you in my journal, I conjure you up in my dreams.

Know this sweet woman. I have loved, I love, I will love again.

I will love you as well as I have learned to love myself,

sometimes with abundance and generosity of spirit, often imperfectly.

I can’t promise I won’t hurt you, I will. It is the nature of life and love,

yet I will give you my best and hope you can accept the rest.

My passion and desire will wax and wane, yet my love will always be true

and yours. You will have my hand, my heart, my attention.

We will laugh at our similarities, and practice patience with our differences.

We will hold each other during the dark nights

and giggle under the covers as the sun peeks in the window in the morning.

Unknown Valentine, come out, come out, whoever you are, whatever you do,

wherever you live, whenever you’re ready, however scared you may be,

I am waiting for you, my new love.

Linda Lenzke lives in Madison, Wisconsin and has been writing poetry, spoken word monologues and comedy for the past 30 years. She edits a poetry feature for Our Lives magazine, has conducted interviews for the Madison LGBT Community Oral History Project through the University of Wisconsin – Madison, and is a founding member of the LGBTQ Narratives, Activist-Writers Group. Linda has self-published a poetry chapbook entitled, Scenes of Everyday Life and is currently working on a memoir entitled, Perfectly Flawed. With members of the LGBTQ Narratives Activist-Writers she is producing a spoken word monologue production entitled, Conceal & Carry: Queers Exposed, which chronicles the diversity of queer life and love. She can be seen performing stand-up comedy or reading poetry and memoirs at Queerspeak, a Madison LGBTQ open mic.  Contact Linda at llenzk(at)charter.ne

Previous poems:

Queer Love Poem Day #1: Not Having a Smoke with You by Lillie Craw

Queer Love Poem Day #2: Two Poems by Blaine Marchand

Queer Love Poem Day #3: porch kitty & this too by Alysia Angel

Queer Love Poem Day #4: Kite String and Keys by Blythe Baldwin

Words by Blythe Baldwin

The friction of your kiss is enough to leave me wanting

to discard the impulse to hide under umbrella.

Crack and splinter- I can hear it whimpering in the wind.

There is always something held back between tight lips.

The barometer’s lowering levels

can manifest the illusion of pressure that bears down on us like a sieve

leaving marks where the body refused to yield graciously.

This has been our history.

Come gather around me-

We have already left enough bruises and broken flesh

in our path.

I do not fear the storm clouds you become

on darkened days.

I want to make you

see the love I bear in shallow veins.

Concentric like the rings of a tree,

I have withstood fire

and drought for your arrival.

Take this

watery gift it is thicker than the tightly coiled heartbeats we

hold ourselves down with.

Take this

kite string and keys

I have left out in the open for you

the tease of metal and twine.

You already know

the way I look sans lightening rod

and armor

why hover with the pinprick crackle

of your caress so close to my flesh?

Take this

all electro-static skin and gooseflesh

all saline sweat, sigh, and stifled moan.

I want you to ask me

to show you how I make love.

For you

it is no secret

born of tight lips

that you move me.

A willow tree caught in a thunderstorm.

Wind whipped and begging for the clap

of thunder in your eyes.

A tear for every raindrop ill-spent

a thunderbolt singing in your palms.

Loom and strike twice

leave me all spiral split open

and wilted

after you’ve come.

Blythe Baldwin is a darling of the San Francisco poetry scene. Find more here:

Previous poems:

Queer Love Poem Day #1: Not Having a Smoke with You by Lillie Craw

Queer Love Poem #2: Two Poems by Blaine Marchand

Queer Love Poem Day #3: porch kitty & this too by Alysia Angel

so you brought another
rat
sleek furred king
tail longer than my forearm
i held my hand over my mouth
danced a jig in the parlor
squeaked in horror
my fine hero
scooped his lifeless body up
but not his entrails
like tiny pink
garden hoses
coiled wetly
on our doorstep
you watched on
crooked smirk
steeple teeth
scarred over lamplight eye
one chewed off ear
and fur
like grey mists
you look so sweet
when you roll onto your side
vulnerable fat belly
alarm meow
murder
heart

this too
you said
“if i was a zombie i would definitely want to eat you”
with my foot held gently in your hand
and then
“you’d taste like a little perfectly ripe peach”
i squealed into the darkness with pleasure
no no no no
(yes)
the memory of the screaming children
holding onto their final moments of freedom
the sun’s fingers losing grip on the day
your sweet head on my breast
and air so soft around us
it never looked like this
in the wild

Find Alysia at alysiaangel.blogspot.com/

Previous poems:

Queer Love Poem Day #1: Not Having a Smoke with You by Lillie Craw

Queer Love Poem #2: Two Poems by Blaine Marchand

Sleep weights the body,
a wedge, like the Rift Valley wall,
between sheets and cover.
At the darkest point,
a moon floats above the rim.
Sometimes ridged fingers
of an inclined hand.
Sometimes the pale plain
between rise of hip bones.
Sometimes hair drifting
across a face.

Deep within the body
desire is an ancient land
nomads wander through
and never fully possess;
is a water catchment
drawn to the surface
of the parched savannah.

The tropic sun
slides under the eyelids,
dissolves.
But traces remain,
imbued with moisture:
morning light bristling
the canopies of acacia,
softening the leafless baobabs
like hairs on the folds
of far off hills,
the down matted
at the torso’s divide.

Mbeya, Tanzania

Tomato

You take down a tomato

It sits in your hands,
still warm from the atrium
of southfacing window,
heaps both of your palms
with the colour of setting sun
at summer’s height.
Curved, abundant flesh
taken from your chest,
held out to me.

I offer you this
a poem, a knife
to unleash the swell,
a wedge of crimson ardour,
the yield beneath
its circumference of skin

the condiment of seeds
for our mouth
pungent and savoured.

Poems from Blaine’s book The Craving of Knives available on the onilne or through Buschek Books

Previous poems:

Queer Love Poem Day #1: Not Having a Smoke with You by Lillie Craw

Lillie Craw

“o god it’s wonderful

to get out of bed

and drink too much coffee

and smoke too many cigarettes

and love you so much”

is what I’ve written on your hand

while we are sitting in bed

feeling only slightly depressed

about being a tranny and his lady

in the world today.

I stole it from Frank O’Hara

who I’m reading on our ordinateur ancienne

while you are reading a book

you heard about on NPR,

National Public Radio.

Speaking of French

(and not just in French)

I would be lying if I said

I don’t think you’d be any more handsome smoking Gauloises.

So I say

I think you’d be devastatingly handsome smoking Gauloises.

What we are doing now is called parallel play.

You know that without me telling you,

and I learned it at college where

I studied sociology

for several

semesters.

Perhaps surprisingly,

I did not cultivate my interest

in Gauloises through my time at school,

but rather through my unfortunate affinity for

Roman Polanski

films.

You can be an artist without being tragic

and I can be a poet without loving you for it.

Taking T makes smoking doubly unhealthy

and I know you know,

but no.

They have not done longitudinal studies.

Find more of Lillie’s poetry at ediesmom.tumblr.com

But love, as we all know, isn’t so straightforward. St. Valentine had nothing to do with romantic love (though I suppose he may have felt it at some point), but in classic Catholic tradition, we celebrate his martyrdom as he refused to convert to paganism before his death. Meanwhile, in an ironic twist that only religious hubris can provide, we came to associate Valentine’s death with the pagan fertility festival of Lupercalia, the Festival of the Wolf where dogs and goats were the martyrs, not men.  A queer turn of events, indeed.

Lupercalia called for the men to dress themselves in hides and run through the streets, whipping all the women who lined up for their lashing.  Why, you ask? Because these lashing were said to inspire fertility and strength.  Could Lupercalia be the first holiday to celebrate the connection of pain and love?  Is Lupercus the patron saint of BDSM?

How queer.

Artist credit needed

To celebrate our queer history let’s remember that you can never guarantee how time will memorialize you, nor how our current lovers and friends see us compared to how we see ourselves.  Let’s celebrate that love and pain are inextricably linked, and that when we invite one into our lives, we help ourselves survive the other.

For the week leading up to February 14th, I’ll be posting a daily queer love poem on my blog.

These poems celebrate the love of the kill, the love of art, the loss of love and the love of loss, the longing for love and the longing for love’s release.

The poets are mostly friends and community members, beautiful people who have learned to see love from a different angle that most. If you love their poems, please be sure to let them know. 

I have me.

This lack of support means I could easily cloister myself, furtively hiding my process to avoid the stigma of self-publishing.  I could pretend that my process looks identical to an author with a big NYC agent and Broadway based publishing company.  I could do it. Many indie authors do.

Via Trancendental Colour

But that would indicate a shame for my chosen path. It would foster the idea that my choice to self-publish is somehow “less than” rather than intentionally chosen into.

So instead of shutting myself off to outside scrutiny, I chose transparency.  I vlogged about my process, even when it felt humiliating or demoralizing. I posted unedited excerpts from Lunatic Fringe.  I questioned the book’s title on Twitter, talked about painful editing processes on facebook, and ultimately published a book that is my first ever attempt at writing one.

I choose transparency for many reasons:

• I believe that my journey in learning how to unlock my voice, write my first novel, and publish it, can help other nascent writers with their own processes.

• I believe in the value of seeing artists as human, who all have our own learning curves. Books do not spring fully formed from our heads like Athena.  They often start out frail ugly little things that require constant feeding, nurturing, and tough love to turn into the critters we see sitting on our bookshelves. It’s important for wannabe authors to see this, in order to develop confidence in their skills.

• Writers are made, not born.  Writing well, like any skill or art, is a matter of practice. I’m going to keep writing books, and they’re going to keep getting better.  I don’t want my debut novel to be the top of my career.  I want to constantly learn and tighten my prose. I want each book to integrate all the lessons I’ve learned from the ones that I completed before it. Part of this means that every book will have problems.  Some folks may dismiss me as an author because of this, but I hope that others will see what I’m up to and appreciate, not only the stories I tell, but how I’m telling them.

• The way we relate to technology these days means we are all more transparent about our lives.  We’re sharing our relationship statuses with everyone on facebook, we’re tweeting about the fight we just had with our mom so that not only our closest friends know, but so do our 650 followers.  Some bemoan this turn towards the voluble. I exalt it. This transparency creates connection and undermines the ivory tower effect. When I read Neil Gaiman’s ga-ga tweets to his wife, it reaffirms the fact that Neil Gaiman is a real human being; he’s a writer who has achieved outrageous fame, but he got that way by writing and learning and writing and connecting and writing and working like a maniac.  He is not some avatar granted fame by the fates. He’s not fucking Harry Potter.  He’s a dude that worked hard and earned his worth.  This means that I can have opinions about his work and study his process and that I can actually learn something from it.

• Connection.  I love it when readers tweet me or send me emails.  I love it when they ask questions or offer suggestions. I love posting a reading on Facebook and then seeing people there who learned about it through friends. It makes me realize that my very real book is making a very real difference in people’s lives.  Maybe not hugely, but I don’t need to be huge to be important.  Particularly because Lunatic Fringe is a story about queer people and sexual identity, it’s more important to me that some folks connect to it deeply rather than a million people thinking, “not bad” and tossing it on the shelf.

• Transparency makes me braver.  Writing a book is scary. Publishing it is fucking terrifying.  Two years of my life are on sale for $14.99 and people are judging it on the internet. Fuck, right? People I really care about are reading it. People I want to respect me are reading it. People I want to sleep with are reading it.  And people I want to hire me are reading it.  So, every time I see someone I know who’s read the book, my heart starts getting a little overeager.  And sometimes these people tell me they loved it, or that they thought it was okay, or they give me the coldest silence I’ve ever felt.  And then I get to choose how I react. As someone who was a producer and curator before I endeavored to create my own art, I’ve learned both sympathy for the creator and calm gratitude in the face of criticism.  Of course I want people to like my work, but I also enjoy learning greater inner-strength when encountering the thoughtful (and sometimes not so thoughtful) opinions of readers.

I realize that, like self-publishing, not everyone will resonate with transparency.  But to me, it’s essential.  It’s why I self-published live on the internet, and why I’ll continue to connect this way, and share work in various stages, and post videos of me crying.  It’s who I am, and I want readers to see that, to relate to it, and to find their own voice by watching me find mine.