When the Only Light is Fire

Yesterday, I found out that my chapbook manuscript, When the Only Light is Fire, has been accepted for publication by Sibling Rivalry Press. The collection will be available in November 2011 which seems it is a long time from now, but also feels like it is tomorrow.

I plan on discussing the experience of publishing the chapbook here on the blog, step by step, but for now – I’m just going to keep saying the title out loud & cheering.

“Isaac, After Mount Moriah” in LineBreak

by Ben Pier

My poem “Isaac, After Mount Moriah” is featured this week over at LineBreak.

A Message For Queer Brothers & Sisters

by Guerra De La Paz

Here’s my video in support of Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Campaign.

I created this blog in 2008 & chose the title “For Southern Boys Who Consider Poetry (when the soul food isn’t enuf)” in part because I adore the original play by Ntozake Shange and because my version of the title made me giggle. It made me smile to think that I had come to poetry as the result of a kind a hunger.. the likes of which could not even be satisfied by collard greens.

Over the last two years, the blog has increasingly become a space to address poetics unique to queer emerging poets of color. As I have met amazing poets of color, I’ve tried to feature them on this blog to get the word out to you – wherever you are. Lately though, the title has come back to haunt me.

Ntozake Shange’s play was entitled “For Colored Girls Who Consider Suicide (when the rainbow isn’t enuf”). Her play dealt with a deeper hunger.. a more persistent yearning in the lives of black women: a starvation of love.. self-love in particular. In the month of September, nine gay teenagers (that we know of) committed suicide in response to a similar kind of starvation. We have not made this country safe for them. From the federal government on down to our schools and households, we not have taught our young queer brothers & sisters to truly love themselves.

I fear that the rainbow is not enough.