Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.
Salt Lake City
by Christian Gullette
We’re not the first married men
to sneak a kiss
in Temple Square,
but no one cares.
The Visitor Center model
of the temple
looks too small
to hold anyone’s prayers.
A boy, I built
a dollhouse from a kit.
I wasn’t given any paint
so it would look
different from my sister’s.
Two Lego people
sat in the kitchen
in front of a stack of pancakes.
They never knew
what part of their lives
they were in.
We married
one of the times
it was legal.
Today,
I bring him to
a city that held
the Olympics.
A city that values
stamina. A city
that sometimes wants me
to see inside it,
this 80s Marriott
with its glass elevator.
Copyright © 2021 by Christian Gullette. Originally published in Northwest Review, Fall 2021.
About the Author
Christian Gullette is a National Poetry Series finalist and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Northwest Review, Los Angeles Review, and other journals. He is a 2022 Discovery / 92Y Contest semi-finalist. He serves as the editor-in-chief of The Cortland Review. His website is christiangullette.com.
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.
