Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi
Now we are 10

The equation is “10.”
I am single and free.
And he is not more.

His presence was a burden.
A life that I passed in a den,
Our marriage was an incident;
No, an accident that occurred
As a life imprisonment
I was sentenced to.

I lived those years
As if I were dying
Day after day—
Month after month—
Year after year
But now I have won the war finally.
One is to zero,
Yes “10” is my score.

I will rejoice.
I will sing.
As I were born again;
I am free today.

Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi  is the author of two books on lesser known Indian languages: A Grammar of Hadoti (LINCOM GmbH, 2012) and A Grammar of Bhadarwahi (LINCOM GmbH, 2013). His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies, journals, and magazines worldwide. His poem “Mother” was included as a prologue to the essay collection Motherhood and War: International Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), edited by Dana Cooper and Claire Phelan. Amitabh is an assistant professor of linguistics at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University in Katra, Jammu and Kashmir, India.

William Wordsworth
Surprised by Joy

Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee?—Through what power,
Even for the least division of an hour,
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind
To my most grievous loss!—That thought’s return
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore,
Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn,
Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more;
That neither present time, nor years unborn
Could to my sight that heavenly face restore.

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) is the author, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, of Lyrical Ballads (1798), a collection of poems that helped establish the Romantic movement in English literature. Wordsworth is perhaps best known for The Prelude, an autobiographical poem first published in 1850. This sonnet refers to the death of the poet’s daughter, Catherine, at three years of age in 1812. The date of composition is not known.

This poem is in the public domain.

Painting by Richard Carruthers (1792-1876) © The Wordsworth Trust; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation.

Lawrence Schimel
Call Boy

Someone there is that doesn’t love a call
boy’s line of work, who notified your folks,
that they might put an end to this career
you’ve chosen for yourself: escort/masseur.

Your heart accelerates its steady beat
when you recognize the flashing number
your beeper’s display reveals: How had they
found out? No matter. You must call them back.

You doubt they’ll understand, but you are not
ashamed of what you do. Wary, of course,
in who you tell, for prejudice informs
many a reaction—but not wary

enough, it seems. Someone opposes this
oldest of professions. To be desired
is what we all desire, though few admit,
to others or themselves, how strongly they

possess this feeling—or rather, how this
yearning possesses them. Your parents fear,
of course, that you’ll catch AIDS, or wind up dead
in some back alleyway. But sex for sale

these days is almost safer than any
relationship, where trust might be misplaced
and rash decisions made in the heat of
passion. “Go ahead and fuck me without

a condom, but just this once.” In hustling
there’s a boundary, well defined, of what’s
to come—and often, who. No compromise
is made for love or pity, though someone’s

always trying to toe the line. That’s fine;
it merely helps define all the limits.
Good fences make good neighbors, after all;
it’s what these transactions are all about:

distance, disinvolvement, discovery
of barriers: latex and emotion,
things which keep men wanting more, and coming
back. Even you. You lift the phone and call.

Lawrence Schimel is  the author of the poetry collections Deleted Names (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2013), Desayuno en la cama (Egales, 2008), and Fairy Tales for Writers (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2007); the short story collections The Drag Queen of Elfland (Circlet, 1997), His Tongue (North Atlantic, 2001), Two Boys in Love (Seventh Window, 2006) and Una barba para dos (Dos Bigotes, 2015); the graphic novel Vacation in Ibiza (NBM, 2003); and the benefit cookbook Food for Life (Cleis, 1996), featuring recipes and anecdotes by LGBT celebrities whose royalties were donated to food programs serving people with AIDS. His children’s books include Volando cometas (Bellaterra, 2013), about women and HIV. He has won the Lambda Literary Award (twice), the Independent Publisher Book Award, and the Spectrum Award, among other honors. Since 1999, he has lived in Madrid, where he works as a Spanish-English translator.

This poem appeared in Deleted Names.

Nancy Scott
Shamika and the Rental Voucher

After her sister overdosed, Shamika took in the boy,
five years old; she was the only family he had left,
but she couldn’t keep a kid where she lived,

against the rules. Could I help her get a bigger place?
It’s not natural, she said, to share a bed with my sister’s kid.
If you knew Shamika, nothing about her was natural,

not a mop of blonde ringlets framing her café-au-lait face,
glitter mascara, her body sculpted by a spandex mini,
pop orange low-cut top, and cork wedgies with ankle straps,

which added another four inches to her 5’10” frame.
Star-studded ruby nails so long I wondered how
she tied the kid’s laces or glossed her full, pouty lips.

Yes, you’d turn around and look, especially if you were
in the market for her talent, then again she might not
be your type, though she certainly didn’t look like anyone

who’d raise someone else’s kid. With theatrical aplomb,
she welled up, not sure what to do—put the boy in foster care
or move with him to a shelter—if I didn’t help her.

The next day she called and asked me to meet her
at 10th and Grove, where she climbed out of the back seat
of a black, stretch limousine with wire wheels,

and invited me to get in. Okay, I did, but that was between
Shamika and me. Squashed between her long bronzed legs
and a mute white guy in a green suit and cowboy boots,

I handed her a packet of papers to sign. Up front,
the boy bounced around working off a sugar high
from the M&Ms the chauffeur kept feeding him.

Coveted rental voucher in hand, Shamika gave me a hug,
her breasts firm beneath the sheer dress, a swirl of purple
that reeked of stale perfume and sex.

Several months later, Shamika appeared at the office,
unexpectedly gaunt, dark hair nappy, no makeup,
wearing a dirty t-shirt, faded shorts and flip-flops.

The authorities had taken the boy. I loved him…
already my son, she said. T-cell count…but I was so sure
I’d have more time…I’ve asked to be buried as Bernard.

Nancy Scott is the author, most recently, of Running Down Broken Cement: New and Selected Poems (Main Street Rag, 2014) and the managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets, the journal of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative in New Jersey. She was a social worker for the State of New Jersey for eighteen years assisting homeless families, abused children, and foster parents. Her poetry has been widely published in journals such as Witness, Mudfish, Slant, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Verse Wisconsin, Poet Lore and The Ledge. Learn more about Nancy and her work at www.nancyscott.net.

This poem appears in Running Down Broken Cement.

Julie R. Enszer
Time Piece

Do you remember hospital visits?
Medicine too toxic to be touched
by human hands and dispensed
throughout the day? Do you remember
digital watches with multiple alarms?
One friend wore two on each wrist,
all of different colors. They beeped
asynchronously; this one for pills
with milk; this for pills on an empty
stomach; these two with meals.
We marveled at the small
slender chips precisely tracking
time. We raged at the disease,
at the way treatment was worse
than the ailment and offered no cure,
at how no one cared about the burden
of so many time pieces shackling
one’s wrist. In the end, wasting,
the watches drooped to his palms.
We poked more holes
into their plastic bands.
We believed in the magic of time,
in the possibility of small pills.
Keep on the regimen, we whispered,
New drugs in the pipeline.
We crooned reassurances,
crossed our fingers and toes
when he sat on the toilet.
On good days, the door open
for a stream of new magazines
and hushed conversation;
on bad days, closed. Nothing
but silence. In the end,
it didn’t matter—digital alarms,
the precise measurement of time.
His ran out.

Julie R. Enszer, PhD, is a scholar and a poet. Her book manuscript, A Fine Bind, is a history of lesbian-feminist presses from 1969 until 2009. She is the author of Sisterhood (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013) and Handmade Love (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2010). She is editor of Milk & Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2011). Milk & Honey was a finalist for the 2012 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. She holds MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Maryland. She is the editor of Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal, and a regular book reviewer for the Lambda Book Report and Calyx. You can read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

This poem appears in Sisterhood and is posted with kind permission of Sibling Rivalry Press.

Kelly McQuain
Monkey Orchid

“Found throughout southern Europe as well as the Mediterranean, Orchis simia, the Monkey Orchid, is remarkable for its speckled clusters of purple-pink blooms. Each flower is simian-shaped and complete with what can only be described as an engorged monkey ‘phallus’—thus necessitating that this orchid be kept far from the bouquets of those of genteel upbringing.”
—Lord Basil Attenborough,
A Field Guide to the Flowers and Grasses of Western Europe. London, 1899

“Trust me.”
— Circuit party. New York, 1999

Tonight I’ll wear my joy
erect, conspicuous and speckled,
opening a turnstile
to a tumble of tribal brothers
clanging cymbals, clinging arms,
while what dazzles
dangles
for all to see—
so let’s dance!
Shoulder the weight
of our bodies’ burdens,
fling our funny crap,            laughing
as a mirror ball sequins our skin:
We are locked in a roving sea
of sweaty chests and clamoring hands,
each of us waving our Day-Glo glans
ornamentally,              raving
to a techno-beat.         You? Me?
We blend into oneecstasy,
an orgy of blossoms,
of bottoms and tops
living as though we will always be
a party to the circuit party,
a parable of pleasure
almost parody.

TonightI am scared
and electrified by everything I could become:
pure monkey desire,
my cock a loaded gun
blossoming on this shared stamen
of desire(don’t think of disease)

We area monkey orchid
seeking release
from mostly awkward
daytime moments
that drive us half-insane,
surrounded now by our other selves.
Drugs dream inside our veins.

Tonightwe are sacred:
watch us unfold:
wallflowers at the orgy growing bold!
Are these spots on our skin
the blotchy purple-pink of sexual flush?
Amyl nitrite on our breath
—a popper-bottle head rush.       Each lick

is like a whisper
not quite confessional
as bold stamens keep unloading
in this strobe light processional
of desire aping love,
of young men exploding,all the while
secret saner selves
haunted, wondering:

Will we survive
this ravenous age of plague
when blood wants to become
one river running
through many bodies?
Oh, we playful, foolish monkeys.
Oh, this petal cage of desire and death.
Kiss me quick—first you, then you—
I’ll bare my teeth
and keep barreling through.

Kelly McQuain’s poems and stories have appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Redivider, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Kestrel, The Pinch, Asssaracus, A&U, Kin and Mead, as well as in numerous anthologies: The Queer South, Between: New Gay Poetry, Best American Erotica, Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, and Skin & Ink. His chapbook, VELVET RODEO (2014), won Bloom magazine’s poetry prize and went on to receive two Rainbow Award citations. He has twice received fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He was a 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow and a 2015 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Visit him at KellyMcQuain.wordpress.com.

This poem originally appeared in A &U: Art & Understanding.

Don Russ
What Would I Have Said?

“O, Johnny, I hardly knew ye.”
—Irish folk song

What would I have said to a legend
of size and scheduled product, a starring
set of parts? How do you do? How do you
do it? Is fit enough?

A thousand women and they say
some men? In the end does it matter
which? Or second drink in hand:
It isn’t acting is it?

Action, yes—lubed and lighted
action. But acting? Given the synecdoche
of the standard shots what difference
would it make? You couldn’t fake it,
couldn’t butt or unembodied breathe
us to belief in seedy make-believe.
And wouldn’t you say your body’s use
makes you an object too?

But now he’s down? Played out?
Paid? Flesh made lesson, fed the jaws
of some awful justice? Nothing
we say is for the dead, the living
dead, the sick among us.

Have mercy, Lord, it’s for all of us,
flawed and dying too.

Don Russ is the author of Dream Driving (Kennesaw State University Press, 2007) and the chapbooks Adam’s Nap (Billy Goat Press, 2005) and World’s One Heart (The Next Review, 2015). His poem “Girl with Gerbil” was chosen for inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2012 after it appeared in The Cincinnati Review.

John Donne
Holy Sonnet X

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

John Donne (1572–1631) is the author of Holy Sonnets, also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets, a series of nineteen sonnets first published in 1633. Though the collection was published posthumously, modern scholars agree that the composition of the poems dates from 1609–1610. Donne also wrote numerous other collections of poetry and prose.

This poem is in the public domain.

Tamara Kaye Sellman
Immortality

To her he is Tut burnished in ambergris, a royal,
perfumed marvel, so when he nicks his fingertip,
when he whispers he is dying, of AIDS, when he
twines the bandage around the cut, the intense
crinkle of it buries her alive. Before her, walls of
catacombs parade preserved images of afflicted men—
half-shaved, scabbed, pale, emaciated. Each of them,
alone. Backs bend under invisible slabs of disease,
fingers excavate pills from papyrus cups. There is
glyphic laughter, crying, coughing. No dangle of
grapes, no palm fans, no solar bursts or baptismal
floods, no garden vines snaked around ankles, only
the dressing of his insignificant wound. Please be
there, he says, at the end. She offers a platter laden
with late-season figs, pomegranates, mint. Stuff your
skull with sweetmeats, she thinks, measuring him
like a tailor, her fingers massaging the thin selvage
of the roll of gauze.

Tamara Kaye Sellman lives in Bainbridge Island, where she works as a sleep health educator and MS activist. Her poems, short stories, and nonfiction have been published widely and internationally.

This poem was previously published in Switched-on Gutenberg, March 2001

Jennifer L. Knox
Waiting on the Ambulance

This music feels like a paper cut the size of my face, on my face.
Normally, I find the song very relaxing—there’s only two notes,
and the singer’s talking about a cowboy. The way it just kind of
rocks back and forth like a teeter-totter. I was going to say
something about fat people on the teeter-totter but then I thought,
“You could stand to lose a pound or two yourself, kiddo.” So it’s
just a teeter-totter with nobody on it. This kind of questioning—
fretting over the feelings of imaginary fat people—may very well
be what’s making me tired. I’ve had a long day, I think.
Did you ever see that Twilight Zone where a woman
named Barbara walks into a department store and she’s really a
mannequin on shore leave living as a real person for one month
but she forgets who she is? The other mannequins are waiting for
her to return so they can take a turn being real. When the mannequin
manager reminds her who she is, Barbara is not mad at all. “Oh,
of course. I remember now. I’m not real.” And she apologizes for
making them wait. I thought that showed a lot of class on her part.
I feel I’m waiting on a message like that: someone’s about to tell me
something and everything will fall into place, make a heck of a lot
more sense. This is a lovely home you have here. I have a what?
Where? On my face? Here? Here? Here? Here? Here?

Jennifer L. Knox is the author of four poetry collections, all from Bloof Books: Days of Shame and Failure (2015), The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway (2010), Drunk by Noon (2007) and A Gringo Like Me (2007). Her poems have appeared four times in the Best American Poetry series as well as in the anthologies Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner, 2003) and The Best American Erotic Poems: From 1800 to the Present (Scribner, 2008), both edited by David Lehman. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, American Poetry Review, McSweeney’s, and Bomb, among other journals. Born in Lancaster, California, she currently lives in Ames, Iowa and teaches at Iowa State University.

This poem appears Days of Shame and Failure and originally appeared in West Wind Review.