Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Boombox Ode: Enjoy the Silence
by K. Iver
A landline lets me dance with you.
My one-deck and your two-deck
are dialed to 98.5 fm without
an echo. If we speak aloud
this miracle of fiber wire
and radio wave, harmony
could split. From our speakers:
soft synth, a baseline, a choir
reverbing, a guitar riff that rises
and falls, asks and answers. I can’t
see your movement, the bedroom
you’re quiet in. Somewhere, bodies
like ours are pulsing under the same
pink neon to the same words
like violence, break–Bodies like ours
are touching and strangers watch
only because they’re gorgeous.
Let me pretend you’re back in my
bedroom, before my mother found us.
You’ve risen from the pine floor
and pulled me up. You want me
to stand for this. Let me pretend
all I’ve ever wanted, all I’ve ever needed
is here. Tell me that’ll be us. Soon.
Copyright © 2022 by K. Iver. Originally published in The Adroit Journal, April 2022.
About the Author
K. Iver is a nonbinary trans poet from Mississippi. Their work has appeared in Boston Review, Gulf Coast, The Adroit, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. They are the 2021-2022 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow for the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. They have a Ph.D. in Poetry at Florida State University.
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.
