Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Humpty Dumpty
by Spencer Reece
for Mark Wunderlich
Iowa
in my
owl-eye
I crack
delicate
Acropolis
Io
fleeing
Wisconsin
Fabergé
Easter
egg
off
the Empire
State
I go I
wow
my hoi polloi
my yolk
my holy
water
I am
the town
of Santiago
I am
a Stonewall
mirror ball
a million
crushed
shards
of Christ
after
the war
Picasso
never
returned
to Spain
Copyright © 2022 by Spencer Reece. Originally published on Queer Poem-a-Day, June 2022.
About the Author
Spencer Reece is the author of The Clerk’s Tale and The Road to Emmaus, long-listed for the National Book Award. In 2017 he edited, Counting Time Like People Count Stars: Poetry by the Girls of Our Little Roses. The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Poet’s Memoir and All The Beauty Still Left: A Poet’s Painted Book of Hours arrived in 2021. He has worked as an Episcopal priest in Honduras, Spain, and New York City.
Queer Poem a Day
- Day 1: Self Portrait as a Body, a Sea by Donika Kelly
- Day 2: Birthday Suits by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
- Day 3: Obsessions by Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué
- Day 4: The Baby Inside My Baby by Nomi Stone
- Day 5: To Be Saved by CM Burroughs
- Day 6: At the New York City AIDS Memorial by Stefania Gomez
- Day 7: Love in the Time of PrEP by Jaques Rancourt
- Day 8: The Morning After by Ellen Bass
- Day 9: Argument of Situations by Shangyang Fang
- Day 10: Ode to Sneakers by Tory Adkisson
- Day 11: Boombox Ode: Enjoy the Silence
- Day 12: Soon by Makshya Tolbert
- Day 13: Photograph by Jenny George
- Day 14: Salt Lake City by Christian Gullette
- Day 15: Humpty Dumpty by Spencer Reece
- Day 16: The Antihero by Megan Fernandes
- Day 17: On Growing Bored with Synonyms for the Apocalypse, I Rename It Carl… by C. Russell Price
- Day 18: All My Friends are Sad & Bright by Cameron Awkward-Rich
- Day 19: 2000 miles and this is the love letter I send you over text by Noa/h Fields
- Day 20: Book VI from The Queerness of Eve by Emilia Phillips
- Day 21: Oracle by Ari Banias
- Day 22: gxrl gospel iv: beast of a southern wild by Aurielle Marie
- Day 23: Let There Be Pride by Richard Blanco
- Day 24: Jacob Riis Memorial Beach by Stephen Ira
- Day 25: from Dependence, the Joistrix / How you are made by Emily Martin
- Day 26: The Need for Repitition by Jim Whiteside
- Day 27: Arm’d and Fearless by Julian Gewirtz
- Day 28: Polyamory by Madeleine Cravens
- Day 29: GPOY as Rainbowfrog.gif by Aerik Francis
- Day 30: Gay Epithalamium by Benjamin Garcia
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.
