but then Florida banned bodies banned books
politicians hadn’t read banned things we can think
& say. a gay man who’s taught in the same FL school
for decades told me it’s just too much. I didn’t want
to write another political poem about power & men
who have it. Instead, I wanted to write about the moon
as a metaphor for queer love. I wanted to write
about how sexy I find punctuation. My desire
to cuddle with ethically non-monogamous question marks.
Allen Ginsberg howled it’s the job of the poet to keep
people up at night thinking. Florida, of course, banned
him & the beat poets in the 60s called them the downfall
of American literature. Sound familiar? Poems they haven’t
read help us understand ourselves, each other & power doesn’t
want that. Some theorists argue all poems are political
on the aesthetic level. Poetry plays with line breaks ideas
of grammar & logic & forms its own conclusions.
I don’t know if I agree with those theorists, but I do know Florida
is my home & this pome cannot sit in silence so I stand with banned
books & bodies & teachers & anyone who thinks it’s just too much.
I mean we may not all agree on poetry’s function
but most of us are tired of powers who say they don’t get
our lines when they haven’t even tried to read them.
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This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2023.