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Day 12: Forty by Julia Guez

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

Author headshot
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

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2021 Queer Poem a Day


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.

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