Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
High School Sleepovers with Straight Girls
by Julian Guy
In the middle of rain, sunflowers on the fence,
sheets left outside hung heavy with night,
Hanna sleeps. Such soft small breaths, easy.
I love her in my stomach, dream always
of being with her laughter in locker rooms,
passenger seat of her Volvo across sun-bright
desert, collapsed in grass post-soccer practice.
She is so straight. So in love with boys
named Mason, Josh, Andrew. So blue sky,
no worries, no deep untwistable truth.
And I am good practice. When we kiss,
lie on the couch cuddled up, it’s friends.
We wake to snow. Her mother yells
the sheets froze. They look like ghosts.
Copyright © 2021 by Julian Guy. Used with the permission of the author. Originally published on Queer Poem-a-Day on the Deerfield Public Library Podcast on June 25, 2021.
About the Author
Julian Guy is a queer and genderqueer writer born in the West. Julian is a graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno, where they received the DQ Creative Writing Award, Ester Early Writing Scholarship, and James Taylor Writing Scholarship for their poetry. Julian loves swimming, eating cotton candy while roller skating, and gossiping in the park with their friends. They split their time between Reno and Brooklyn. Twitter: @lizard_blitz
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.
