Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Untitled 1975-86
by jason b crawford
after Alvin Baltrop
i am not sure if we all shall make it
to june, we are already so tired. sexton
said something like this once, then lived
until october, leaves drying around her feet.
am i afraid to live that long? i am afraid
to let june be the marker for us. the dead
bodies piling like sloppily laid bricks. by the time
we found our third beloved spitting maggots
from his lungs, i had forgotten I was even
supposed to mourn; grief became the only thing
i could taste, its iron drenching the air. i have
run out of flowers to offer to this river, instead
i fold my palms into lilies. instead i offer my dead
to feast. oh, how they want us dead. oh, how
some of us still breathe. i celebrate in the mouth
of a man i do not know but who knows how many
more junes we both will survive. remember
the river? the dead summer? the faultless
birds that would pick at our toes like french
fries? did you tell the wind to not carry the stench
of bile back from the morgue? tell the wind
it keeps us remembering.
Copyright © 2024 by jason b crawford.
About the Author
jason b crawford is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut Full-Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz is out from Sundress Publications. They are a 2023 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellow. Their second collection, YEET! is forthcoming from Omnidawn Publishing in 2025.
Queer Poem a Day
Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this fourth year of our series is from the second movement of the “Geistinger Sonata,” Piano Sonata No. 2 in C Sharp Minor by Ethel Smyth, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.
