Hello friends. It's 8 PM EST which means you're right on time for my live tweet of @fourteenpoems tonight. Spending time with these poems today has been a joy for me, a welcome relief from the chaos of the world, so I hope that you will enjoy this thread just as much

as I will enjoy making it. Now, let's talk about the MAG.

As the title of the mag may suggest, these issues carry only fourteen poems each. And you didn’t hear these from me, but the folks over at fourteen poems say they’ve got the most exciting queer poets within

these very pages, and let me tell you, this issue is small but MIGHTY. You will laugh, you will cry, you will swoon, you will want to get a copy of this issue in your hands (which you SHOULD, like NOW). And I know I know, you’re like “Yeah yeah,

you say that every live tweet” which is exactly why I’m going to let you decide for yourself! Thank you @fourteenpoems for sending me a beautiful copy of this issue, and now, let us wade into the waters of this beauty.

“You hunch two fingers into a wrinkled rabbit to make
your sardonicism clear. An elfish smile in the dark.”

—“Confirming What We Knew” by Mícheál McCann ( @micklemccann)

McCann first plops us down in the middle of a intimate moment, a couple lying together in bed at dawn. The lover’s question of where the speaker finds “beauty” quickly begins the poem’s magic; a constant shifting of images that really made this poem stand out.

I love how the body is so casually rendered in terms of both the natural and manmade world—the “things as tight as harp strings,” “the long train carriage of a penis…like a beech branch,” “this window / (my heart).” The speaker’s exercise in making these types of comparisons

is wonderful and brilliant because there is this equalizing that happens, where the body is then viewed with the same kind of reverence and awe that we would view the “butterburs, colt’s foot, open-mouthed trillium.” McCann breaks this spell with the speaker’s meditation

on the problems that beauty cannot solve, and we are so quickly brought back down to the reality that beauty isn’t everything.

“I know how that can sound antagonistic. I know how
that can sound runner up. I stack my achievements like a spine.

Like books balanced on my head.”

—“You Told Me Your Ex Was a Model and I Didn’t Eat For Three Days” by Madelaine Kinsella ( @madskinsella)

Kinsella’s poem is a fantastic illustration of the “comparison game,” what happens when we begin to measure ourselves alongside others. The speaker has just been told that her lover’s ex was a model, and immediately she plummets into a rabbit-hole of self doubt.

This poem is so relatable, and the comparisons are so sharp—“My accolades drag behind me like cans behind a wedding / car” is SO GOOD. And the way Kinsella plays with language is incredible (the poem’s opening in particular blew me away). She writes, “I’m not tall enough to ride.

I could never be as poised. / I’m never poised. I’m heavy on my feet. I’m heavy.” That breakdown of the language, how the small changes to the phrase completely renew the meaning, is so masterful. And I love the double meanings, how “I’m not tall enough to ride” holds both

both the reference to a rollercoaster (emotional and literal) but also a sexual undercurrent, and how “I’m heavy” is both a self-deprecating dig on the body but could also mean emotional heaviness. The layers Kinsella creates are really something else.

“Oh the miracle
It is, my hair dyed against yours: red &
Shimmering, my unable to mouth the marvel
Lets out a deep heavy moan & all the birds
Suddenly are born anew.”

—“Marvel” by Akpa Arinzechukwu ( @akpaah)

Arinzechukwu’s poem is all about intimacy, its images charged with the sensuality of physical closeness. The speaker discusses their continued amazement of the intimacy they share with their lover, but what really makes this poem special is the way Arinzechukwu toys with

the reader, the way they lead the reader to the brink of the erotic, the tip of a sexual image, then quickly pull back into something more mundane (ex: “My body repeating your touch / Echoing its every sentiment / Taking its juice in as you work me / Through the Park”).

I love how that strategy is sort of mimicking the teasing that happens in an intimate and sexual exchange. Arinzechukwu also brilliantly leads us to images of sex through these really amazing peripheral descriptions. They write, “we / Have a roof above us. Oh the miracle /

it is, my hair dyed against yours.” The image of the speaker’s hair dyed against the lover’s indicates extreme physical closeness, two bodies touching. So so brilliant.

“because the sugar made us crazy—
crazier than two girls who
touched each other for the first time
not knowing that they’d have
tomorrow”

—“love scene, revisited (with only one actor present) by Ayoola Solarin ( @AyoSolarin)

Solarin’s poem is a celebration of old love, the speaker reminiscing on the earliest flowering of her relationship with a beloved she is no longer with. The images in the second half of the poem in particular are really striking and vibrant, while also hinting at sexual intimacy

and closeness—“everything / turned the same hazy yellow / saturated finger nails / gleaming / lips sheened slow drying quick to part.” I love how Solarin uses both fragments and space to create multiple meanings in this poem. How the line

“lips sheened slow drying quick to part” would only evoke the image of lips if the larger spaces weren’t present. It’s almost as if the physical space in the lines LITERALLY makes room for more meaning, for more images to creep in. But at the heart of this poem

is the speaker’s gratitude for the time they had with their lover in the past, a nostalgia for the relationship but also their own beauty—“I looked so good then / gold-rimmed, double haloed / a celestial / me, / the one in Valencia / still / with you.”

The breakdown of that sentence, the fragmenting of that last line just slowed me down, led me gently into that final punch.

“I wanted
to keep

you as beautiful
and perfect

as I knew
you could be

in my memories.”

—“Three Grindr Poems” by Thomas Stewart ( @ThomasStewart08)

As someone who has been trying to write about dating apps myself, Stewart’s poem about Grindr sparked my interest right away. And this poem is a powerhouse. Stewart breaks it into three different sections/vignettes from different dates/sexual encounters from the speaker’s

life. As a result, we get this really striking progression, a shift in the speaker’s participation and perspective. In the first vignette, the speaker is at his most passive, barring the lover from using his name because “[his] anonymity is [his] authority.”

In the second vignette, the speaker has more agency, denying the lover the opportunity to see him again. This is framed as a choice of power, the speaker having the power to keep the lover beautiful, the power to save himself from any future harm. The final vignette was jolting,

as the speaker is now in a role of power, is now seen as the “doer” and not the receiver. But the language of this section reveals some cognitive dissonance here, the speaker’s own conflicting feels about his actions—“I unbuckle, do my part / feel the criminal / within me”

juxtaposed with “as I hold your waist.” This feels like a sort of epiphany, the speaker finally seeing what is it like to be on the other side of the coin.

“make nesting dolls of hands and shells
a little hallelujah of prayers for these damn blessings
the angle just so
a crypt that creaks open on hinges
of moss and muscle it is an invitation”

—“sweat from the seam” by Rhienna Reneé Guedry ( @chouchoot)

Guedry’s poem is a really stunning poem about oysters, and then it’s not about oysters at all. But let’s first bask in the poem’s imagery, which is so rich and evocative. Guedry walks us through the process of shucking an oyster, and the descriptions are really wonderful—

"find the ridge think of it like the / way a book lands open after falling off a shelf.” Guedry’s care in crafting the images is doubly felt in the care of the process she describes, which is part of why I wanted to stay in the careful grasp of this poem.

But it does this really brilliant shift to the sensual (which is so fitting because oysters=aphrodisiacs). Suddenly the image of the oyster being split open is something else in our minds—a body part, flesh. Guedry teases us with that final line—“pour the liquor down the throat

and suck the shallow / side where the blade lifts a perfect ribbon’s curl / your mouth and tongue you’ll use them / to separate the hard from the soft.” That line break on “you’ll use them”? *Chef’s kiss*

“And I am immediately swept back to the time my
Same Tio guts the pig in front of our innocent eyes,
The same way that same man has intended for my
Body.”

CW/TW: animal violence

—“His Profile Says He is Hunting” by Anthony Aguero ( @shesnotinsorry)

This poem hit home for me, as I know this fear and this discomfort when I see that a man loves to hunt/ has hunting pictures in a dating profile. Aguero ties this to a personal and visceral experience to heighten this fear. The speaker of the poem sees hunting in the dating

profile and begins to think about watching his own uncle kill a pig. Of course, there is the basic connection of the hunting. But with each stanza, Aguero peels away the skin of the comparison and reveals that there is really fear underneath, fear of violence against the body,

fear of being seen as something for taking. The speaker wonders if the man in the dating profile will handle him the way his uncle handled the pig, “indirectly and impersonal.” This poem made me emotional because that fear isn’t only reserved for the man in the dating profile,

but it extends to the family as well, the speaker asking himself “I wonder if he looks at my body and wonders the / Safest place to point the gun.” Aguero does a really fantastic job of illustrating the fear that sometimes comes with being in a marginalized body,

the danger of being seen as something less than human, especially in our most intimate relationships.

“In tile-
searing heat, I sit
in your cool, watch
the black-and-white cat cling
to your fraying, twisting
bark like I cling
to our name”

—“Vine” by Kostya Tsolakis ( @kostyanaut)

In Tsolakis’ poem, the vine is this wonderful symbol of ancestry, of keeping record of time and history. The speaker of the poem directly addresses the vine in the poem, nicknames it in the first two lines, (“Gift from my forefather, / green calligrapher”). I think the choice

to call the vine a calligrapher is so wonderful, as it further establishes the vine as a sort of keeper of stories. I love how the vine is given a life in this poem, how it has the power to “absorb / every voice cast / in this yard.”

The vine not only serves as a symbol of preserving history but also of passing it down, being fed (both literally and figuratively) to the generations that come—“Each leaf you bear, / a word from an ancestor. / I pick them, fill them with / rice, mint, dill.”

This poem is a really beautiful and masterful exploration of storytelling and story-keeping by way of the mundane. And what MUSIC in these lines!

“In this language you are called
copper, innocent as a kettle
of brewed tea, but in others

they know you as blood, a trace
of some old violence
in your rising sap.”

—“Blood Beech” by Ben Strak ( @benstrak_poetry)

Strak writes about the blood beech, a specific type of beech tree that bears deep red/purplish leaves. I love how Strak essentially uses the tree as a kind of touchstone in this poem, a lasting symbol with a connection to the speaker that changes and shifts over time.

We first see the tree through the speaker’s eyes as a child, the tree seen as some sort of outside, something worthy of the violence and damage inflicted upon in—“A freak, as children we ran round you, / as far from the summer dark / of your canopy as possible. /

The words that, later, we scratched with plastic cob skewers into / the thin bark of your trunk.” I love this because for a second we almost forget that this a tree the speaker is talking about, as this feels deeply reminiscent of the type of bullying we may find

on children’s playgrounds, this sort of group avoidance and then attack. But then the poem flips to the speaker’s older voice, and the speaker has come to understand and even relate with the tree. The speaker says “I think of my blood rising, / the bruises that have bloomed /

on this body,” perhaps connecting to and regretting the earlier damage the speaker inflicted on the tree. And yet the speaker finds hope and solidarity with the tree, taking note of how the tree continues to grow even in the face of its own suffering.

The blood beech then becomes a symbol of perseverance, of pushing forward.

“i want to try it all again
now that you have left,
the way I first imagined
it would be, safe & soft

like spring rain, rippling
waves & gentle rocking”

—“to consummate” by Nkateko Mansinga

Masinga writes a brief and tender poem about making love. The poem tracks the speaker’s changing feelings towards sex, from their complete and comical misunderstanding of the word (“i used to think it meant to consume one’s mate”), all the way to coming to value

the parts of intimacy outside of the act of sex (“i cared a greater deal / for the holding after / & the longing before”). I love how this poem locks in on the complexity of sex, acknowledges and even finds pleasure in all of its moving parts.

This poem is such a wonderful invitation to just bask in its pleasures—both sonic and imagistic.

“his swallow
of dark, his frame of
burning, a lit hilltop fir –
o glory to the
ground where I can
make a locket of this
body”

—“Dollhouse” by Dominic Leonard ( @le0nardpoetry)

Leonard’s poem itself feels like a dollhouse—this spliced open replica of reality, the disjointedness of its different rooms. And this is where the poem finds its beauty; in its stunning fragments, the surprising turns of language—“No / one really is alive / more than I am alive,

secured / to the sot & thrall / of the hurling thing.” But underneath this dollhouse and these wonderful pieces of language sown together lies the speaker’s need for an escape, for relief from the pain caused by the boy who turned out to something other than what the speaker

expected. And the last three lines of the poem are what really stuck with me—“I can / make a locket out of this / body, to keep it, / to be not here only.” To make a locket out of the body is to detach from it, to compartmentalize its pain, to open it on your own terms.

“last night I met a girl
her smile was so wide
I dreamed she would
swallow me
a carnation in each cheek”

—“Blush” by Georgie Henley ( @geohenleyreal)

Henley’s poem is this really wonderful punch of surreal mixed with sexual intimacy. We begin with this almost cartoonish image, the speaker imagining being swallowed by a girl’s wide mouth. And this sort of surreal imagery continues, these overly dramatized (and logistically

impossible) handlings of the body—“I spread her sternum / ribs breathed heat.” But as the poem races towards its end, we quickly realize that the “hunger” the speaker begins to speak about is of a carnal nature, which then completely transforms everything that came before it.

To be swallowed by the girl is something else entirely, to spread her sternum and find ribs breathing heat now seems attainable, even expected in the heat of a sexual moment. And I especially love how Henley ends the piece, “the hunger will kill me / before the thirst.”

What a way to communicate that urgency, that need.

“What of this hyphenated existence?
I do not accept either assignment
So they, push me into tight corners”

—“Citizenless” by Shon Mapp ( @ShonMapp)

Mapp’s poem is one of the shortest poems in the issue, and yet I would argue it’s one of the issue’s heaviest hitters. I love this exploration of identity and societal pressures to “check a box” when it comes to who you are. “What of this hyphenated existence?” the speaker asks,

which is a nod to the often hyphenated terms created to indicate that people may simultaneously belong to two groups/cultures/etc. This poem argues that even the creation of those new terms and of the new groups is still playing into the societal urge to name, to categorize,

to place in a specific box. Mapp also argues that this impulse to categorize and place everyone in categories is actually working to strip away individuality—by forcing people to identify a certain way, we are essentially erasing their identification choices.

Mapp’s last question lingered with me, and will continue to linger with me. “Am I still not mine to define?” What a reminder that marginalized bodies are often NOT ours.

“the word callipygian how sexy
to have a well-shaped buttocks
to be callipygous sculpturesque Greek-beauty
glute-glamorous Gomorrah of the gods”

—“The New Achilles” by Evan Williams ( @evansquilliams)

Williams’ poem, a playful and joyful response to Chen Chen’s “If I Should Die Tomorrow, Please Note That I will Miss The Particular,” which imagines all of the things the speaker would miss, all of the little things that speaker finds dear. This poem departs from that vein,

and instead latches on the love of the sound of callipygian, which becomes a link to the two poems. The speaker in this poem is caught in a playful moment, singing and cooking, and while noticing the butt-like quality of the squash they are cooking, they then imagine having

a beautiful sculpted backside. This poem is both hilarious and tender in the way that it captures the speaker’s desire to be wanted. Williams writes, “soon my bodacious butternut will come out / and all the Greek kings will / forget Helen.”

There is playfulness here but there is also that tinge of longing too, to be loved and accepted and desired.

And the end of my live tweet today comes in RIGHT at an hour! WOO! I was able to live tweet so quickly today because I've been sitting with these poems all day. I think this issue is really wonderful, and what a treat it was to discover these writers.

You guys should get a copy of issue 2 if you haven't, and you should check out this live thread and see if anything speaks to you! Thank you again to @fourteenpoems for wanting to be a part of #LitMagLiveTweets!

Host signing off to go write some poems (or nap, who knows?)

Until next time!

Thank you all for your continued love and support! Share, retweet, like, and most importantly, follow these authors!!