this is an ode to the broken-hearted. for those early days when the ground is unsteady and you are still measuring your worth by their absence instead of the staggering truth of your own presence. this is a poem to hold you until you are steady enough to hold yourself. …
A letter to my queer family // Pulse Orlando
It has been one month since the massacre at Pulse Orlando. One month that has seen more death and devastation and violence than I can possible process. One month of communities ripped apart, here and abroad. One month of divisiveness and unimaginable pain and the rumblings of revolution. Perhaps it …
Sometimes dancing is where the revolution is born
Yesterday, I was reading about the recent anti-LGBTQ legislation passed in North Carolina. As an out, vocal and proud Queer woman – this news cuts me to my soul. As much as I would love to say I’ve reached a place where it can’t touch me, that would be a …
always, always, begin again
It is all going to crash down you know everything brick by brick glass shattered foundations crumbled there is no way to save this. there is no way to save this. the ending was written long before you ever heard the tentative starting notes no last ditch efforts no swan …
poem for the world
listen, you, with your beach glass heart you, with your moonshine teardrops this is a poem for the world and this is only a poem for you both of those things are true and neither, really but either way you, love are holy so, hold your capacity for melancholy and …
Giant Saint Everything | Sunday Slam {Buddy Wakefield}
Okay, so I’m a day late. But this one is worth it. Buddy Wakefield is a master. There is a point when tears don’t work to wash things away anymore. Grabbing for breath has now broken my fingers. I miss You so much some days that I beg for …
Uncommon Woman | Tara Hardy {Sunday Slam}
“For any woman who’s ever been told she’s too much: You, who broke out of the mold before they even cracked it off you. You, who came out inventing your own how-to-scale-a-wall with only vowels. You, who fireflash in the eye of so many midnights, so many men who want …
Maybe I Need You | Andrea Gibson {Slam Sunday}
“Love isn’t always magic. But if I offered my life to the magician, if I told her to cut me in half so tonight I could come to you whole and ask for you back would you listen? For this dark alley love song, for the winter we heated our home …
Love Poem Medley | Rudy Francisco {Slam Sunday}
“I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: Scared… but reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you. You see, I’m not really a love poet. But if I was I’d …
Plan B | Sarah Kay {Sunday Slam}
“But I know she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boots nearby, because there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks that chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for. Because rain will wash …
Shake The Dust | Anis Mojgani {Sunday Slam}
It may be true that music can save your mortal soul, but it’s Spoken Word that has my heart. During the hungriest periods of my life, it has been poetry that fed me. First as a reader, consuming poem after poem like a starving woman. Rumi, Hafiz, Erica Jong, …