On your knees with the queens in the poetry darkroom, poetic pleasures await! Then we wipe off our kneecaps before hitting the Pride Parade.

If you'd like to support Breaking Form:
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Aaron's STOP LYING is available from the Pitt Poetry Series.
James's ROMANTIC COMEDY is available from Four Way Books.

NOTES

Tess Gallagher's "Stopping Place" is from her book Willingly.

Donna Stonecipher's "Inlay 18 (Sei Shõnagun)" is from her book The Cosmopolitan. Read a bit about the book here.

Sei Shōnagon's actual given name is not known. It was the custom among aristocrats in those days to call a court lady by a nickname taken from a court office belonging to her father or husband. Sei Shōnagon (c. 966–1017 or 1025) was a Japanese author, poet, and a court lady who served the Empress Teishi (Sadako) around the year 1000 during the middle Heian period. She is the author of The Pillow Book.

The Dick Dock in Provincetown is so popular it has its own Facebook page. Or check out this Youtube video called "Provincetown's Dick Dock: Making Gay Sex Magic!"

If you want to know more about the history of the Meat Rack on Fire Island, here's a good starting place.

Read Ocean Vuong's poem "Theology"

Marilyn Nelson's "For Mary, Fourth Month" is available in her The Fields of Praise: New and Selected.

Jim Powell did indeed win a MacArthur in 1993. Read more poems by Powell here.

Read Frank Stanford's "Blue Yodel of the Desperado"

Read more about Osip Mandelstam

Kevin Prufer's book of poems The Fears won the Rilke Prize. Read the judges' citation here.

Visit Michelle Tea's website here. Or read an excerpt from her poem "I Used to Be Straight" here (scroll down).

Read Franny Choi's "Unlove Poem"

Read "Prayer/Oracion" by Francisco X. Alarcón, trans. Francisco Aragón

Read "American Wedding" by Essex Hemphill

Here's June Jordan's fiery "Poem About My Rights"

You can read torrin a. greathouse's "Aubade Beginning in Handcuffs" here.