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LHS Junior's Poem Earns NY Times Honor

LHS Junior's Poem Earns NY Times Honor

Mel's entry:

Mel Diemert

Queer Kid Imagines An Alternate Reality/Politics Disguised as a Love Poem

 

Queer: A synonym for an absence of love

Not a new definition of love,

But its antithesis

In this world, I cannot afford indifference

I was unable to find it at Goodwill this summer

I limp through life as a statement, a red flag declaring war

 

In another world,

We sit on the floor of our bathroom, 25, after a long day of work

Your hair is up

The world is quiet

And softly pirouetting

I know how to make your coffee;

4 sugars, a splash of creamer

It overflows the cup and pours onto the yellowed, aging tiles

And the world is a newborn baby with jaundice

Orange, crying, glowing

Effereservent is the word carved into our skin

In this world, I don’t listen to the sirens go by

Instead, I lean my ear toward the babbling creek of your throat and tune everything else out

I trace hearts on your shoulder, smooth down a hair

Jesus died years ago, but I swear for a moment

I can see him painting us on an easel in the corner

Clementine shelters his canvas

Here, indifference was baked into my childhood brownies

I was born clutching it tight like an IV

When I lost my first tooth, I tasted it in my mouth instead of blood

Here, love and fear aren’t conjoined twins,

Split in half and told they are not the same soul

In this world, I have cried,

But never wailed

 

Back in reality,

I’m a cozy home for uncomfortable questions

They fester, an ineffable wound

Back in reality,

I cross my fingers every four years,

Tight, like ribbons

Meanwhile,

Love becomes silent, it shrivels

And action is a highway,

A headache

Of noise