Many moons ago, a person calling themselves only “JT” suggested I do a column on Houston, Texas poet Pat Parker. This poem is almost a manifesto, illustrating in each stanza the double standard of being gay in public. So unwind, recover, and enjoy this Tuesday’s poem.

The ode is so freeing! So exuberant! And in a column about gay poets, exuberance brings us straight to Frank O’Hara.

Somehow at ten, the hypothetical future does not include so much bruising. Coi fish dish sets and mess kits seem practical. But even more hypnotizing is the hypothetical past. Potential is limitless. Changing one thing throws you into a completely different present.

I suppose I wanted to be part of the cultural moment. To feel connected to the parts of this city I never bother to appreciate. It took a lot of willpower to head down there, on my own, into the swarm of tourists and impeding rain. But I felt unsatisfied by the trip. I never got out of my head.

Mark Doty is one of the poets I go to in moments like this, when I’m struggling to wrap my arms around an experience. “Human Figures” is one of those poems. It embodies that feeling of moving through a city and trying to fit the strange, private moments of others into your understanding. Masterfully, it succeeds— tying messy, disconnections together in a spectacular arrival by the end. It is also a mysterious poem, much more moving than I expect, each time I read it.

On those hot days Eve — curious Eve — always carried a flower. She snuffed it and snuffed it, twirled it in her fingers, laid it against her cheek, held it to her lips, tickled Katie’s neck with it, and ended, finally, by pulling it to pieces and eating it, petal by petal.

Bishop is so technically astonishing in her poems, she is often considered to belong to a whole new echelon of inaccessibility: a poet’s poet. A poet whose work does more to instruct other poets on how to write than it does contribute to a dialogue about the human experience. But I think what saves her from being a poet’s poet is the effortless was she uses form.

Sarah Haskins rocks my world. Her weekly-ish “Target Women” episodes on Current TV’s infoMania take marketers to task for the… how you say… ABSURD tactics companies use to attract women consumers. She’s given her hilarious treatment to poop, Barbie, diets, medicine, and by far my favorite, yogurt.

We’ve got two lesbian poet laureates in one year! Taken together, they represent a big step for gay poets, and two very different poetic sensibilities.

Why hello. If you have not yet seen this series of videos, that means we must not be friends yet.

The story goes that the GI Joe television series made 27 PSAs in the ’80s that all ended with “Now we know!” “And knowing is half the battle.” Then! Fenslerfilm re-dubbed them into some of the most strangely captivating viral videos around. Good luck being productive for the rest of your day.

I thought I saw my mother
in the lesbian bar
with a salt gray crew cut, a nose stud
and a tattoo of a parrot on her arm.
She was sitting at a corner table,
leaning forward to ignite, on someone’s match,
one of those low-tar things she used to smoke,