much like my poetry, i swear am queer 
by accident, backed into its corner

by boys with playground mentalities,
but this isn’t a poem about them.

my chest swells when chosen family
from philadelphia looks around

brewer’s art basement, crowds into little
red room at club charles and thanks

me for bringing them there. in los angeles,
someone tells me the beauty of baltimore

is that someone’s corner bar is some bar
that someone else has never heard of,

and vice versa. i was still straight
when i lived on john street, barely bi

when i moved north to remington.
i was pin-straight the night the hippo

closed, but i was there—because
who among us didn’t start a staunch ally,

an impassioned plea on behalf of communities
i’ll later wish i’d been part of sooner? now

genderless, i find myself proud, but still
learning how we all weave together,

perennially early to the party but late
to the game. how comforting to find

in time: the first rule of queerness is to dissolve
all rules, to be bell hooks’ self that is at odds,

inventing, thriving, living. i don’t want
a life without that anymore—and that means

i am okay that there are people who do not
know my corner bar for for all of the ways

its pours and people have shaped the self
with which i sleep so soundly.

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