Someone asked what life as a queer person is like and I told them
by Arien Reed
tomorrow is not a promise
but a threat rolled into a joint
whose paper has been worn
away by fingers that don’t own us
but will set us on fire anyway
as though burning is all a faggot
is good for—becoming a blackness
that can be ground underfoot
and forgotten, becoming smoke
and touching lungs that never
should have held us down, but
choosing, in the end, to become
the change we wished to see
in that person, or maybe just
returning to lips that never
should have swallowed us,
and vanishing.
About the Author
Arien Alana Reed, MFA, co-founded, and is currently the president of, the LGBTQ Allied Staff and Faculty Association at Fresno City College. His chapbook "The End" was recently unleashed on the world by Roaring Junior Press, his unpublished collections have been finalists for the Kore Press, Grayson Books, Press 53, and Inlandia poetry prizes, and his ravings and doodles have somehow found their way into Oberon, Florida Review, Sonora Review, High Shelf Press, J Mane Gallery, Allegory Ridge, and others.