© Bryan Borland

book: picture a mirror
held up to your face,

uncomfortably close,
painfully close,

a torturous exercise
in exceptional vanity.  Picture it

held there as you sneezed,
ugly-cried, laughed, tripped,

kissed, picked your nose.
Picture it broadcast

on the high-definition television
in your second cousin’s bedroom.

Picture a comma forgotten,
lines flubbed,

watching yourself
in something akin to pornography.

Picture a birthmark you didn’t
know was there

right on your ass,
right in the middle of the screen.

Now I know why
Brent Corrigan* doesn’t watch

his own movies.

the house by the train tracks,
a stephouse, not the home I knew,

a place I kept at a cold distance
out of respect for the original.

Returning to leave again, I packed what was left
of me in room that was never quite mine,

a room I shared with warm bodies
and Madonna’s Ray of Light.

I found notebooks full of bad poetry
and ugly t-shirts in closets.  I found virginities

that evaporated to white-ashed memories
in my Shakespearean hands.

I found a hardback,
How to Publish and Sell

Your Own Book, that I stole
from the Monticello High School library.

I found a cross I used to wear religiously
that never meant a thing.

I found yearbooks full of angsty-photos
still damp with second-adolescence drool.

I found the summer I broke my ankle,
the same summer my best friend broke his arm.

I found an empty bottle of hydrocodone
and the bed that we shared.

I found myself the baby, always the baby,
the caboose of the family

served dinners on silver trays
lined with the eight-to-eight labor of my father’s knees.

I found myself there less and less. I found myself
renting apartments. I found myself purchasing bedrooms of my own.

I found myself a visitor, sleeping with my boyfriend
the night before my grandmother’s funeral.

I found myself stopping there with my husband,
returning from gluttonous trips to New Orleans.

I found myself away at holidays,
the family shifting like the ground beneath us.

I found myself walking through, as though it were a museum, admiring
the silver saxophone of my maternal grandfather.

I found myself engulfed by the military jacket of my paternal grandfather,
hearing Arkansas football from the television downstairs.

I found myself talking to my father as an equal.
I found myself remembering the little, gigantic things.

I found myself shuffling frantically through papers, grieving.
I found some things just the way I’d left them.

I found myself on the telephone, speaking with a deep voice
to a stranger at a call center in Tennessee

hearing words like double indemnity
and your mother’s going to be fine.

I found myself thankful this room was here.
I found it familiar. I found it an ally.

I found myself carrying boxes,
nodding at buckling walls.

I found both of us holding steady
as locomotives travelled north and south.

© Bryan Borland

ENTRY EIGHT: Hagku by LaMar, Queen of the Haiku

She abhors “Fag Hag,”
Instead, prefers to be called
“Princess Among Queens.”

But weep not for our other entrants, Dear Readers. MedicatedLady’s trash can be your treasure!  She has graciously decided to offer each participating poet a special token of appreciation for demonstrating fearless poetic prowess!  Shoot me an email with your address, and you’ll receive a care package from the dynamic duo that is us.

Thanks to all who voted!

but tell me that Dionysus
wouldn’t have done the same.

I have an affinity
for cute boys
doing foolish things,

myself having been
a foolish thing
a time or two.

It’s good to have friends.

My Life as Adam is a 121-page collection of 70 poems, many making their print debut.  It is mostly autobiographical and tells a narrative of my journey to self-acceptance while struggling with the primary dueling forces of nature in the southern United States – sexuality and religion.

I will be reading from My Life as Adam on March 27 in New York City at the Rainbow Book Fair and April 10 in Little Rock at the Arkansas Literary Festival, with more dates and events forthcoming.

Never give up on  your dreams, folks.  It can happen.  I want to once again thank those who have helped Adam come into existence.  My father, of course, to whom, along with my brother, this book is dedicated.  The love of my life, Christopher Baxter, and my wonderful family.  My friends, both in the flesh and on the computer screen, who have provided support, comfort, and encouragement.  John Stahle, Philip F. Clark, and Seth Ruggles Hiler, my publishing supergroup.   Loria Taylor, David Koon, Jessie Carty, and Stephen S. Mills, whose time and opinions I value greatly. And finally, to the readers of this blog, who have taken me from a tentative, toe-dipping pseudo-poet to a manic scribe with a bullhorn, shouting from the rooftops, I say thank you, thank you, thank you.  I am forever grateful.

ENTRY ONE: Untitled by BR Belletryst

To you who has been there most,
the one I’ve seen more than a mirror,
healthy or not.
It’s over.

You’ve gone. The wound is fresh
and stinging, lemon
masks we used to make
don’t feel the same anymore.

The hours on the phone
now quiet, or searching.
The laughter, the fun;
dead.

How do you bury a friendship?
Were we ever friends?
My faghag, who, in another life
could have been the one.

I did love you.
You loved me.
But the conversation,
the inspiration,

has run dry.
Our veins of humor
and companionship
now brittle, filled with dust

of too many arguments,
of too many differences,

and too little respect.
We hemorrhaged, pulses racing,
from impassioned confusion
and harsh words.

Maybe I’ll always love you,
but you tore me out.
No more will the word
Faggot

elicit laughter from both parties.
No longer will the word
bitch
be your, or my, unheavy crown.

It’ll just be us.
You and I.
And the understood weight
of mourning.

ENTRY TWO: Phillip by Paul Andrew Russell

You were always louder
than was good for you,
resulting in painful times
that could have been avoided,
but you were my friend,
and acceptance came with the position.

You accepted my quiet, immature naiveté;
I, your unspoken proclivities,
until one teenage day when,
between the isolation
forced upon you by others
who feared you would infect and ‘turn’
them if they came near,

and the raging hormones,
it all became too much for you to contain
and you crossed the threshold,
broke a unwritten rule.

A rule never given utterance
but as binding as
all laws, all covenants,
a bond between two boys,
the ultimate agreement,
pure friendship,

You dropped the crystal decanter,
filled with the years of our friendship
and it shattered into a myriad pieces
the summer wine of our halcyon days
spilled on the ground
pierced by the glistening shards
that day;
the day you propositioned me.

I never saw it coming,
wish it had never happened.
I behaved badly,
another bruised soul,
like you,
cowed by circumstances
beyond our control.

I refused to speak to you,
for months, then years.
In adulthood we met again,
spoke fondly of, and to, each other.

You were my best friend,
who became less of a friend,
but always my friend,

Phillip.

ENTRY THREE: Wrong Way Love by Gypsy Poetry

I had a lover once
when he got drunk
he liked to dry hump
grind, thump and pump

pressed up against my thigh
I looked up into his eyes
saw the glazed gaze
unfocused light, cast my way

he’d groan into my hair
‘sif I were not there
with a thrust, he fucked
depleting a strange unknowable lust.

the next day he would remember my name
“last night, such a haze, it’s all rather vague,” he’d say
then down he goes for an hour or so
a honey master with cunning tongue

he lavished me with rich gifts,
silk robes, pink heels, scented candles
cheese wheels, foreign films, antique
jewellery and books, a slithering row of books

he hosted those intimate, just for two
Farsi poetry reading nights
he passionately poured the scarlet wine
with a winning dysfunctional smile

we both pretended
contentment, buried the restless resentment
too young to answer the big question
much easier to shrug
in every other area of our shared life
we both were having fun, right?
besides who needs fucking complications, when the money,
the lifestyle, the in-laws, the support, the friendship is this good.

last winter
we met at a rave
in your arms your husband
in mine just another young midnight cowboy wanna be slave

“I see you grew up to be a cougar,” he says
“I see you grew up to be gay,” I retort.
we laugh, we always were good sport.

ENTRY FOUR: One Room Studio by Victor Kondratas

When I first came back to your place
you had mentioned it would be small
you had mentioned that you had a roommate
but what a way to live!

He pretended to be asleep
as we took the only other room in the place
and what do I care, as our skins were melting together
in the bathroom, I pushed you up against the wall
liquor sweet kisses gushed like rum raisin ice cream

It was only on my way home that night
that it really sunk in along with your Spring love serum
he shares your bed with you every night
in your tiny studio apartment
platonic as destitute brother and sister
and I made the third wheel, not he

ENTRY FIVE: No More Hags! by Bindo

The Hag wore black
As she typed the letter
Angered with betrayal
Abandonment

She was sick of being used
Leaned on
Being called
A Fag-Hag

So she wrote to Dan
A gay, help columnist
His Savage thoughts
Might keep her safe
Remove the fear
The thoughts
Of doing harm

Dear Dan,

We are not hags
A hag does not have
Luminous hair!
Who else would ditch
A very handsome date
To drag your drunk ass home
Or tell your relatives
The gay porn they find in your house
Is really hers

The Gay Nanny
(Preferred term of endearment)

Dan Savage
Did not hesitate

Dear Gay Nanny,

I love this new term
Enclosed
You will find a check
For five thousand dollars
Start a business
And change the face of
Hagdom forever

And so it was
The next day
Gay Nannies
Were sent out
Like alternative
Mary Poppins
Singing merrily

“A spoonful of sugar
Makes the Man-Goop go down
In the most delightful way!”

ENTRY SIX: FAG/HAG 3some by Telly McGaha

He has long impressed me
with his poetic finessing
but then she entered:
some sort of medicated muse
slipping me place-filled Percocet.
I have been warned
every piece from
here on is about her
while she, with the hands
of a god, tries to mold me
from mounds of plated pasta
he cooked. I am likely
to cling to her fingers,
the way hot things do
when wet. This all begs
the question:
will they both share
in devouring my semblance
like a modern day fag/hag
lady and the tramp?

ENTRY SEVEN: -j- by Karen Schindler

If I were a boy
her husband would
have to fight me
Fight me for her
time, her laugh
her unqualified exuberance
If I were a boy I would
wrestle all comers
to be the one to make her smile
But if I were a boy
she wouldn’t love me anyway
She only likes older men

ENTRY EIGHT: Hagku by LaMar, Queen of the Haiku

She abhors “Fag Hag,”
Instead, prefers to be called
“Princess Among Queens.”

ENTRY NINE: Fag/Stag: Heteroflexible by Joseph Harker

I blame the bottle: exsanguinated,
it traced out a fateful circle before pointing
to me, and at first I thought
its topaz tequila bite on your lips was how
all straight boys tasted.

Somewhere under your tongue was a spell
that crept into my chest; if you press
your ear to the spaces between my ribs,
you can hear its fitful hiss.
I still toss it scraps, though I’m older now,
and perhaps a few tricks wiser, and there is
grey starting to show at your temples.

There are still some confessions to make:
when I declined to join you
and your girlfriend in a claustrophobic bed,
it wasn’t like your bridges of Königsburg,
figuring out the topography of insertion.

Rather it was because I didn’t want
to share you,
not that I could ever say that to your face.
You’re always the one who examines
the down-gyved brassieres, and I,
the convex zippers; so we will be, chaste,
arm’s length, keeping this brotherhood.

(Though I think I saw you smile
when I stole a glance once or twice.)

ENTRY TEN: FAG/STAG Series: Sick by Tau

“My mom has cancer,” I tell you,
And you wordlessly pull me into a hug
Against your chest,
Where my cheek rests
On the bony planes of your pecs.

No homo.

That’s what the other douchey straight boys
Would tack onto the end of any intimate interaction
As a disclaimer that they were
Not, in fact
Homosexual

As a result of the preceding act of
Sensitivity.

But you feel no need to say this,
Because there is no doubt whatsoever
That you are straight—
Like the parallel lines of our hearts,
Running alongside each other,
But never meant to intersect.
In fact, beating alongside each other
In this embrace,
Yet separated by
bones,
skin,
sexuality,
reality,
You know, whatever else gets in the way
Of parallels intersecting.

I shiver,
Partly out of the cold,
Largely out your warmth,
And let you hold me.

Your arms are much skinnier than my mother’s.

But strong enough
To do the pull-ups
That I could never do—
The sacred rite of passage
For all heterosexual boys in gym class,
Males who weren’t mamas’ boys
Like me.

I felt evil
For even thinking about wanting you
At a time like this,
For resting my head on your chest
While my eyes traced the contours
Of your muscles
While my ears drank the drumming
Of your heartbeat
While my nose picked up the thick musk
Of the Old Spice under your arms.

And my body basked in the bitter envy
Of a desire that only girls could have satiated
By you:

All-American Boy
Who could perform in Theater or Football,
Who could act, sing, dance, and still
Toss the ole pigskin
With Dad.

My mom is sick.
And I am sick for you.
Neither one of us is curable.

But it’s a comfort to know
That the All-American Boy is
Not, in fact
A homophobe.

ENTRY ELEVEN: Ag by zxvasdf

Taut asses, slick hairstyles, fine cut of cloth.
They all are men with stiff pricks all around.
Mine is the exception that lays limp
until a short skirt passes along the window.

Tight crotches, gleam cut goatees, trendy skids.
They all are my friends all secure in homogeneity.
Mine is the exception, sui generis
until the short skirt enters the building.

She sidles next to me,
twirls on the barstool,
and orders a sausage
with her lager.

I lean in to tell her
she’s in the wrong place
for wiener.

The sausages here are good, she winks.
I wouldn’t know, I shrug.

Enter the deepening night’s mandatory awkward moment.

Everyone is lost inside their sex,
Tongues probing
murmured exhalations
into ears and mouths.

Some liquor, a milky translucence,
bleeds down a chin,
to be brushed away
by a devil red tongue.

So, I say as she says, So.
Our laughter twists and twines,
the nervous moment shattered.
The room brightens.

I take you don’t graze with the herd, she smiles.
I’m like the sheepdog, I fumble, always-
-nipping at ankles, she finishes.

I can’t contain my giggles.
You could say that, I splutter.

So you came stag, she says. It was not a question.

The hubbub has raised,
The revelry hearkening
to the witching hour’s toll.
Passions are inflamed.

Voices chase ears, shouted.
In a soft corner there are moans,
and at the door a dispute groans.
The liquor light is sexy keen.

In more ways than one, I answer.
I’m the resident fag hag, she giggles.
Surprised our paths haven’t crossed.
We suck at our drinks in pleasant silence.

She raises her hand. I’m Charlie.
My dad always wanted a boy.
I take her hand.

I’m Charlie too, I say.
My dad always wanted a girl named Charlie.

A choked laugh: the bartender glares at her, wiping her beer from his shirt.

A transmigration has taken place,
the room growing larger and larger
as the decadent go off
in knotted pairs and staggered steps

Towards nightshroud sleeping chambers
or further depots of sin under the moon’s falling eye
where urges are wetly satisfied
or forgotten before the new day.

Bye, Charlie! Later, Charlie! Yowza, Charlie!
These, shouted across the way,
amuses us to no end.
Which Charlie, I quip!

With the odd couple nestled in booths
providing the white noise,
that old nervousness seeps in again.

Her almondite eyes glitter
in the twilight of last call.

She takes my hand, her lips forming a heart.

ENTRY TWELVE: Bryan Makes Me Write A Poem About a Term I Don’t Like by Stephen S. Mills

The first time I got called fag was in gym class,
my junior year of high school,
and I bet you’re surprised it took that long.
Surprised I wasn’t called it coming out
of my mother’s womb that cold day in November,
27 years ago. But no, it was first uttered,
at least to my face, by a skinny blond-haired boy
with gauges in his ears, the kind of boy
who looked like he got called fag too. He laughed
at my voice, mocked me daily as I said
here during roll call, announced by our muscular,
assistant football coach, who we both
probably jerked off to in the solitude
of our teenage bedrooms.

By the time fag was written on my dorm room
door in black marker, my senior year
of college, I was over it. I was an out and proud
fag who wore tight shirts, gay buttons
on my messenger bag, and had a rainbow stripe
on the back glass of my 1994 Buick
Century. Fag was and is a word I own, a badge
I wear with honor. And hag, who cares?
Makes me think of fairy tales, witches,
ugly stepmothers, or maybe I’ve lived close
to Disney World for too damn long. Does anyone
even use the word hag anymore, unless
it’s paired with fag? See, this is where the trouble
begins: the marrying of fag to hag.

I hear fag hag and immediately I see her: overweight,
bad hair, out of style clothes, posing
with a troupe of gay boys. Boys with glittery eyes,
tan skin, tight pants. She believes
she’s the center of their universe because she makes
good jokes, can hold her liquor,
and is reliable as a lesbian, but without the Uhaul.
This universe only exists until some hot-ass
guy walks by offering a drink, a dance,
a one night stand, and then she’s alone.
Her gays off fucking in a bathroom stall, car trunk,
steel cage, which she’ll hear all about
when they call the next day to gush about their new
man crush with the massive dick.

They’ll make her guess just how big, and she’ll play
along, provide the right amount of shock
and one-liners and since it’s over the phone,
she’ll allow some of her tears to roll down
her puffy cheeks. This is a term that takes the worst
in people, fits them into a box, a stereotype,
a trap. The fag: self-absorbed and sex-crazed.
The hag: lonely and in love with boys
she’ll never have. Boys like you and me, Bryan,
who know the power of words.

ENTRY THIRTEEN: Side Order by Elizabeth Stelling

Most of the time, in my life I
have felt like a piece of meat with
a side of fries, and a large shake, a
vanilla bitch; until ‘he’ came along. I
felt the air heat up like a fry baby
on the counter next to me. Damn!
I wanted so badly to be his side order;
hand dipped, beer battered, big and
crispy, large order…Please…After
so many bites, the crust would begin
to scrap the roof of his mouth, a pain
not like the one night stand whose
cock was so big, his mouth muscles
still felt like morning dentist visits.
He always feels my pain, way into the
night, but still keeps me at his side;
close, on those long, long rides. I
am the perfect snack…satisfies…his
need to feel…guilty pleasure, even sex
cannot give. My velvety, smooth interior;
a texture so hot, so smooth, so buttery;
greasy and nasty all at the same time, as
he bites down, wanting more; eating me
up; until what I am…is no more. Everyone
knows he is always is thinking of fillet
Mignon on trays carried passed him at the
bars, and I except the fact that he devours
other tasteless pieces of meat…we all…so
long for. He will be back for more, of me.
Face it, I am like no other deep fried,
southern onion ring he has ever had
in his mouth.

ENTRY FOURTEEN: Billie by Val B. Russell

The last time I saw Billie
He was channeling Liza Minnelli at the bus stop
Full Make up, Stiletto pride and taking a break
From turning tricks on the old side of Yonge Street
He recognized me first and said a firecracker cocaine hi
The blow still on his nose
The heat still between his thighs
A heat he was surgically dismantling
the way his stepdad dismantled his soul

We talked salty about high school and the old says when he was William
breastless and breathless at the sight of testosterone infused jocks in gym gear
We met after lunch during the daily taunts
from kids in closets
He walked by belligerent girly sways to his male hips
blowing kisses as he passed
unafraid in his six foot frame

We glued our hearts together that year before he left
A confidence of project denizens among the middle class butterflies
Now he had grown into his becoming
blossomed into his undoing
Breasts and hormones
he paid for with the body he always hated
We said goodbye with a kiss on each cheek like queens
before he departed in a blue pick up truck
an old married man at the wheel

Three weeks later I remembered William and Billie
when a friend told me he hung himself
at his mother’s apartment
While listening to Lou Reed on the Stereo
He was 23
He was my friend

They will have a succession of stepfathers
and an uncle who is closer than the others
who pays child support.
They will know the story of your disconsolate womb,
and how I pressed warm washcloths on that
meadowed belly, pair of us holding hands
watching chick flicks under a lavender afghan,
talking about these future offspring over ice cream,
far-flung and foolish hopes of children
until the day we were serious.

On the unimportant holidays, maybe I’ll arrive
with belated birthday gifts in hand,
tousle a few heads. When they’ve gone to bed,
we’ll sit with lacrymatory mugfuls of spirits,
uncertainly thankful for
the shapes we take.

© Joseph Harker

From the website – “The event will be held from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm at The Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies (CLAGS) at CUNY, The City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, on the concourse level of the beautiful old B. Altman Building at 34th Street in Manhattan. This is the largest LGBT book event in America, and it is FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.”

For my peeps in the area, come say hello!  Can I handle NYC? Please. Can NYC handle ME, that’s the question!

If she’s the bad cop, I’m the good cop. The entries were outstanding, as you’ll see when I post them later in the week so you guys can choose the crowd favorite.  Both MedicatedLady’s choice and the crowd favorite will receive signed copies of my book, My Life as Adam, as well as random objects from MedicatedLady’s home.

Stay tuned!

the first boy in our class to discover
gels and spray and bathroom mirrors.

He was mean to me, jealous
because I was considered smarter,

because I made an appearance
on the television news

delivering the weather into homes
of the pretty little girls he loved.

I faked the results of the science experiment
that won me small-town media acclaim.

I faked the Valentine I chose for Jay that year,
Be My Friend

when I’m Yours hid in my backpack,
his name written then erased.