Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Forty
by Julia Guez
All the purple flowers,
the way they fall,
white and purple, falling.
See how they turn
their skirts, turning their
white and purple skirts,
so that at least
they fall slowly, make
no sound, beginning soon
to yellow then brown.
Copyright © 2021 by Julia Guez. Used with the permission of the author. Originally published on Queer Poem-a-Day on the Deerfield Public Library Podcast on June 12, 2021.
About the Author
Julia Guez is a writer and translator based in Brooklyn. Her essays, interviews, fiction, poetry, and translations have appeared in Guernica, POETRY, The Guardian, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, and Kenyon Review. Four Way Books released her first full-length collection, In An Invisible Glass Case Which Is Also A Frame, in 2019; they will release her second book, The Certain Body, in 2022. For the last decade, Guez has worked with Teach For America New York; she’s currently the senior managing director of design and implementation. She also teaches creative writing at NYU and Rutgers. For more: www.juliaguez.net
2021 Queer Poem a Day
- Day 1: Pride Month by Shelley Wong
- Day 2: Is This or Is This True as Happiness by Derrick Austin
- Day 3: Nature Poem by Sam Herschel Wein
- Day 4: Ana I Don’t Forget by Gala Mukomolova
- Day 5: Eavesdropping on Adam and Eve by Andrea Cohen
- Day 6: Billow of Thistles by Ruben Quesada
- Day 7: Prayer for My Trans Siblings by H. Melt
- Day 8: Summer by Chen Chen
- Day 9: Embers by Henri Cole
- Day 10: Male Beauty by Richie Hofmann
- Day 11: [unsent draft] by Rachel Mennies
- Day 12: Forty by Julia Guez
- Day 13: Of Contour, of Cadence by Phillip B. Williams
- Day 14: The Men We Loved by Cyril Wong
- Day 15: Riding the Bus Back to Oxford by Catherine Pond
- Day 16: The Window by Jay Besemer
- Day 17: Want Could Kill Me by Xandria Phillips
- Day 18: What a Waste by Jill McDonough
- Day 19: Eros by Randall Mann
- Day 20: An Act by Michael M. Weinstein
- Day 21: Things I Didn’t Do With this Body and Things I Did by Amanda Gunn
- Day 22: Puzzle Pieces by D. A. Powell
- Day 23: Duplicity by Jameson Fitzpatrick
- Day 24: Is It True All Legends Once Were Rumors by Carl Phillips
- Day 25: High School Sleepovers with Straight Girls by Julian Guy
- Day 26: Abu Nuwas by Kazim Ali
- Day 27: Observation Car by Lauren Clark
- Day 28: Love Song by Eileen Myles
- Day 29: Donuts by Dan Kraines
- Day 30: The Lone Palm by Jenny Johnson
Queer Poem-a-Day is directed by poet and teacher Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Deerfield Public Library. Music for this second year of our series is the first movement, Schéhérazade, from Masques, Op. 34, by Karol Szymanowski, 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.
