Doron Langberg, Drawing Mark, 2020

Queerness is a structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present. The point is not that queerness is yet to arrive but that it is an ideality that can be distilled from the past and used to imagine a future.

Jose Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009)
That’s one of the things 'queer' can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren't made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Tendencies (1993)
I know it feels like your life is a line of dominoes that only knows how to fall, 
but I promise you, you are the hand that can pick them up and build a fortress.

Andrea Gibson
And yet the look of that life stayed.
The specific movement of that love,
the pure and unashamed light.

Constantine Cavafy
You are a beautiful thing. We are all beautiful things, 
turning the dark corners of the world into 
places where we can finally breathe.

- Richard Siken
I am a woman who loves women
and I am a person who loves the beautiful,
and we are rewriting the map of what is possible
with every single touch.

June Jordan
We are the architecture of our own rescue.
We are the ones who can love ourselves
when no one else is looking
or willing.

Essex Hemphill
You are not a mistake. You are too many exquisite things to fit into a word.
Andrea Gibson
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver
it is
a power
nourished by comfort
knowing
we are
doing each other's work

- audre lorde
let across the world
a million boys
wake up laughing
& safe in their skin

- danez smith
To be the most beloved is great, but to love is greater
Walt Whitman
So much happiness
is caged
in language,

ready
to burst out
anytime

and fade

We’ve been seated
in the afterlife.

Here
it’s a good night
when the impala sprints off,

a good night
when the pride rips
at the carcass.

Rae Armantrout
Symbolism as the party face of paranoia.
Rae Armantrout
You’ve been crossing
every
with only

Rae Armantrout
Heaven, if it exists,
is when
there is no difference
between watching
and being watched.

Rae Armantrout
A human uses part
of herself to think
of the rest
of herself as existing

“now.”

This is labor intensive.

Rae Armantrout
I collected debris
to sell as crash art,
                    crush porn.

- Rae Armantrout
Then, then, then, then,
the storyteller stutters.

Rae Armantrout
If being is eventual
Rae Armantrout
still voguing
- rae armantrout
Madagascan music that I’ve never heard

Kae Tempest
I’m learning to recognise
each pitch in the scale of your silence

Kae Tempest
Careful with the radio
All songs might be the straw
That whips the camel’s broken back
And leaves you on the floor
No matter that you’ve heard the song
Six thousand times before

Kae Tempest
I’ve come here today to remember myself,
I’m looking for who used to live in my bones
Before they existed to hope for your kisses.
But London has changed

Kae Tempest
Getting out more
Kae Tempest

I’m inviting
one night stands
To come to gigs
and meet my friends
I don’t know
when this will end
I call you up.
It rings
and rings
Sem você é um silêncio tal
Que ouço uma nuvem a vagar no céu
- Chico Buarque, Sem você n.º 2

I wake in the night and hear noises
I stand on my own by the window
- Kae Tempest, Things I do in our house since you left
Nothingness haunts being.
Jean-Paul Sartre
The truth is the whole.
- Hegel
We learn from history that we do not learn from history.
Hegel
Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.
Hegel
The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.
Hegel
Coruja
Orides Fontela

Voo onde ninguém mais - vivo em luz  
mínima 
ouço o mínimo arfar - farejo o 
sangue 
  
e capturo 
a presa 
em pleno escuro.
The lily’s withered chalice falls
Around its rod of dusty gold,
And from the beech-trees on the wold
The last wood-pigeon coos and calls.

Oscar Wilde
O som seco e surdo desta
Fruta caindo
No murmúrio sem fim do
Oco silêncio da floresta.

Osip Mandelstam 
Entardeceu
Sem amor
A boca inflexível

Odysséas Elytis
A hora entardeceu esquecida
Sem memória

Odysséas Elytis
Faço avançar minha mão pela folhagem do vento
Odysséas Elytis
De pé nas rochas sem amanhã nem ontem
Sobre o perigo das rochas cabelos na tormenta
Irás dizer adeus ao teu enigma.

Odysséas Elytis
E o tempo frenético escultor dos homens
Odysséas Elytis
O tempo é a sombra célere dos pássaros
Meus olhos escancarados em meio às suas imagens

Odysséas Elytis
CARMY
You know, the chaos, it is not helpful, Marcus.

MARCUS
It means a lot coming from you.

The Bear, S05E04
I don't know. She said this one thing in the movie that, like, really stuck with me. Subtitled, but essentially, she says, "We let anxiety set limits on emotion, on feelings, on grief. And we trick ourselves into thinking there's limits because of fear."

- Marcus, The Bear, S05E04
I've been there, Carmy.

The Bear, S05E03
I, sometime living, sometime with a name
Yvor Winters
The rain of matter upon sense
Destroys me momently. 

Yvor Winters
The frightened brain, the nervous will,
The knowledge of what must be done,
The passion to acquire the skill
To face that which you dare not shun.

Yvor Winters
A disturbance in mirrors
Sylvia Plath
Cai a lua, caem as plêiades e
É meia-noite, o tempo passa e
Eu só, aqui deitada, desejante.

Safo
and the only thing worse
than losing the trust
of a lover is finding the rust
in their kiss

- kae tempest
TIRESIAS
You long for knowledge;                  
you will soon long for ignorance.

- Euripides, The Phoenician Women
Querido diário,

Hoje me lembrei de que, na Nekyia de Homero, Odisseu desce ao mundo dos mortos em busca de Tirésias, mas encontra também a memória: para descobrir o caminho de volta, precisa antes ouvir as vozes do passado.

Ontem assisti a Backrooms (2026), que parece caminhar por esse mesmo território. Hoje, no terceiro episódio de Proud (2026-), encontrei o poema Hold Your Own, de Kae Tempest, e descobri que ele dá nome ao livro em que Tempest recria justamente o mito de Tirésias — personagem que admiro desde Tiresia (2003).

Gosto quando essas constelações se formam sem aviso. Hoje, no Dia Internacional do Orgulho LGBTQIAPN+, todas essas vozes pareceram encontrar umas às outras.

- AR
Happiness, the brand, is not happiness
Kae Tempest
When all there is is knowing that you feel 
what you are feeling
Hold your own

Kae Tempest
When everything is fluid
nothing can be known with any certainty
Hold your own

Proud, S01E03

pre confessions II
 
I overthink. I think over. 
Over as above. As far from. 
From what? 

Then my body hurts. 
It overhurts.

- AR
what is love but a constellation
of significances

- julian t. brolaski
If I be fair, or false, or freaked with fear
Julian T. Brolaski
a rose is arrows is eros
julian t. brolaski
Why speak of hate, when I do bleed for love?
Not hate, my love, but Love doth bite my tongue
Till I taste stuff that makes my rhyming rough

Julian T. Brolaski
the bear and the salmon
Julian T. Brolaski

it lyked to eat salmon w/ its
fingers like a bear
and then use those fingers
to clean its glasses
it cried and it looked like a raccoon   I believe
it wanted to cultivate this look
hope all is well.  send smoke
signal telegram carrier pigeon 

julian t. brolaski
the music made me feel a little anxious it was
hard thumping dance music a notch
upwards of 100 bpm notoriously the beat of life
the optimum tempo for cpr

- julian t. brolaski
what can poetry do it
cant not not do nothing

- julian t. brolaski
Diagnosis
Andrea Gibson

I suffer
from unrequited self love.
I love myself, but I don’t
love myself
back.
A gente é uma performance. 
Não existe uma coisa antes do que a gente é.
Não existe um ser que é antes do que a gente faz.

- João Vicente, Não Importa (25/06/2026)
There are doors opening everywhere.
We don't know why or what's connecting them.
They keep happening and we don't know how to stop them.

- Phil, Beckrooms (2026)
Demora-te, demora-te assim: 
faz do olhar 
tempo sem tempo, espaço 
limpo

Eugénio de Andrade
no gume do silêncio
- eugénio de andrade
respiro um sol recente
e raso
nas palavras

- eugénio de andrade
Espera
Eugénio de Andrade

Horas, horas sem fim,
pesadas, fundas,
esperarei por ti
até que todas as coisas sejam mudas.

Até que uma pedra irrompa
e floresça.
Até que um pássaro me saia da garganta
e no silêncio desapareça.
A ilha
Eugénio de Andrade

Tanta palavra para chegar a ti, 
tanta palavra, 
sem nenhuma alcançar 
entre as ruínas 
do delírio a ilha, 
sempre mudando 
de forma, de lugar, estremecida 
chama, preguiçosa 
vaga fugidia 
do mar de Ulisses cor de vinho
Dey is times in life when Nature
Seems to slip a cog an' go,
Jes' a-rattlin' down creation,
Lak an ocean's overflow;
When de worl' jes' stahts a-spinnin'
Lak a picaninny's top

Paul Laurence Dunbar
O heart of mine
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Come, O love, whene’er you may,
And you are welcome, welcome.

Paul Laurence Dunbar
Tell me something good,
just one good thing, just tell me
something that will get me through
the hours the days the weeks

Margaret Atwood
It
Rae Armantrout

The sky grayed and it was possible to name objects.

They didn’t yet call out to me. This happened only
when the sun touched their skins.

Then they would do tricks.

Perhaps a silver
bracelet of raindrops
suspended from a bone
thin twig,

almost a crib mobile.

But now I’ve called it several things.
eu queria escrever um poema
estou com dor de cabeça 

eu queria escrever uma cabeça
estou com dor de poema

- AR
If you
were here
I could drive
in the HOV lane.
Loneliness
moves so
slow.

Andrea Gibson
Yesterday I carved your name into the surface
of an ice cube then held it against my chest
’til it melted into my aching pores.

Andrea Gibson
no volume máximo

Émile Durkhein dizia que o sagrado é a pressão que uma pessoa sente do social sobre ela, dizendo que aquilo é intocável, poderoso, especial. A ideia de que a sociedade pode levar você a pensar determinada coisa, sentir determinada coisa, tá aí; tá clara na sociologia.

(...)

Dizer que é uma construção social não adianta nada para quem sofre o mal. Por isso que o ditado americano me parece tão significativo: “Eu tô me afogando e você descreve a água.”

- Luiz Felipe Pondé, Linhas Cruzadas (25/06/2026)
“Fall / in love / with your solitude.”
says the Instagram poet
with 1.6 million
followers.
Maybe it was
“Eat your hunger.”

- Rae Armantrout
Distribution
Rae Armantrout

You think category
isn’t sexy, isn’t
sex. Seems you’re wrong.

Don’t worry. We have
dozens of them, each revamping
the last. A thing

must be recognizable
in order to be
a thing. After a while

you’ll want to introduce
some novelty, but since
it’s been a while

this could come off
as desperate.
Don’t be mad.

You’d like to punish
the smug, crisply packaged
faux-finite?

We have accessories for that.
Guises
Rae Armantrout

I come up
again and again
as if from the ground,
as if in a dream,
see that I’m naked
and cover myself
in a likeness,
oh Lord,
“iconic.”
As if a pebble
could speak for a cave
about “desire”
from a mile off
This trauma isn't a judgment on yourself or who you are.
- Dr Blake, The Agency, S01E08
SAMI
I keep forgetting, we're strangers.

MARTIAN
I know who you are. I know who we are. This is who I am.

SAMI
Is this real?

MARTIAN
It's real.

SAMI
I recognize the face, and I love the man I recognize.
But there's someone else who I can see, who I don't know.

The Agency, S02E07
Psst
Charles Simic

Don’t go psst
With a finger
Over your lips,
You seated behind me at the movies,
Or in church
Where I bow my head to pray,
Or in this dive
Where I’m the sole customer,
Shushing me
Out of a dark corner
As I hum to myself
With eyes closed
Thinking of God-knows-what.
Wellness check
Andrea Gibson

In any moment,
on any given day,
I can measure
my wellness
by this question:
Is my attention on loving,
or is my attention on
who isn’t loving me?
I understand being wooed by the finish line
of sadness. Infinity still sends me nudes
every day. 

Andrea Gibson
The psychology manuals say no one really wants
to die. They want relief. They believe they will never
find it in this world. That belief could be right.
Or wrong.

One would have to stay to find out.
Friend, if you stay, at least we will be
together, and I have an extra straw.

Andrea Gibson
a neutralidade ajuda o opressor, nunca a vítima
- elie wiesel
No such thing as the innocent bystander
Andrea Gibson

Silence rides shotgun
wherever hate goes.
I know most people try hard
to do good and find out too late
they should have tried softer.

Andrea Gibson
my queer feels now like celebration:
something worth living for

jaye simpson
i hope my sacrifice kept the gods      above appeased,
you get to go on   &   love each other
 
- jaye simpson
I returned with a new way to think about you.
On another page Whitman described what it feels like to live.

Alex Dimitrov
And of course I’m still here
waiting for you to look at me.

Alex Dimitrov
There must be ways to delay the past
from so frequently arriving. 

- Alex Dimitrov
Identity is made
of select experiences.

- Rae Armantrout
Provocação
AR

Quem faz a seleção?
O próprio sujeito, a memória,
a cultura e a linguagem.

E ainda sobra, ao mistério, 
uma pequena margem nessa 
história.
To drift with every passion till my soul
Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play,
Is it for this that I have given away
Mine ancient wisdom, and austere control?

Oscar Wilde
O quarto estava repleto de nós, com as nuvens que se juntavam de nossas palavras, 
o nevoeiro de nossos pensamentos

- Tomasz Jędrowski, Nadando no Escuro (2024)
Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

Wisława Szymborska
“Do you still think about him?” 
“But I’m not crying.”

Wisława Szymborska
Everything’s mine but just on loan,
nothing for the memory to hold,
though mine as long as I look.

Wisława Szymborska
Metaphors teach the mind
to enjoy error
and to learn
from the juxtaposition of what is and what is not the case.

Anne Carson
WHY ISN’T IT OKAY TO SAY THERE ARE
THINGS WE HAVE NOT SURVIVED?

Andrea Gibson
GIVE ME THE PALM OF YOUR
HAND.

I’d like to be kind to myself
in every way.

César Vallejo
Fósforo y fósforo en la oscuridad,
lágrima y lágrima en la polvareda.

César Vallejo
Absence has not just been a lack or a gap; 
it has been the very condition of trace and presence.

Jacques Derrida
The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need 
and the unreasonable silence of the world.

Albert Camus
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Lord,
when you send the rain,
think about the roof,
think about the water
coming through the ceiling.

James Baldwin
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Mary Oliver
Shock & Awe
AR

When they cut the head
of the serpent

It had already bitten
its tail

Remaining as one
all the same
Síntese
Antonio Cicero

PAI MÃE
CÉU CHÃO
MÃE CÉU
PAI XÃO
Decoração
AR

Gosto de livros tangíveis.
Aqueles ali, no topo da estante,
servem para quê?
Desistir?
Antonio Cicero

Cerúleo:
o céu
o mar
os olhos dos alemães
os cabelos dos indianos
a noite
a morte
Querido diário,

Hoje, ao ler um trecho do livro Nadando no Escuro de Tomasz Jędrowski, “Uma foto de Isabelle Adjani estava enfiada entre a moldura e o vidro do espelho”, lembrei do dia em que fui ao cinema com minha mãe assistir Camille Claudel. Algumas lembranças sobrevivem assim: comprimidas entre superfícies, não inteiras, apenas a textura de um gesto, a curva de um perfil. A ausência trabalha devagar, desgastando contornos, aprofundando sulcos, polindo o que ficou — até que a saudade deixe de ser imagem e vire contínuo.

- AR
Olhamos um para o outro, já além das palavras.
- Tomasz Jędrowski, Nadando no Escuro (2024)
The money of  the mind is attention, maybe.
Which is not, initially, where I thought I’d begin,
but we’re already here now, using the language
of care and economy, though God-talk was truly
my first way in. Sustained attention is how we approach
a flesh and blood experience of the Divine 

- Joshua Bennett
If self-love
were a mirage,
it would decorate
distance,
shimmer over
others’ eyes,
evaporate
on contact

Rae Armantrout
abusing the system is an oxymoron
- amber dawn
If I desire
women who are fiction,
does it mean
I have fictionalized myself?

Amber Dawn
The queer bar is funhousing again.
Bucking dance floor. Ball pit. Smells
like spandex lamé after the DJ mashes
Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out
of My Head” with New Order’s “Blue
Monday.”

- Amber Dawn
You said NATURE IS INDIFFERENT
TO SUFFERING. I said whoa you and nature
have so much in common

Natalie Shapero
a lógica econômica infiltrada nos afetos
AR

até o vento

parece exigir
alguma forma de retorno

pelas folhas
que move
Have I told you
about when I died and came back
and everyone begged me
to please stay dead? It wasn’t, they promised me, personal—

they’d just gone all out on the funeral, and they didn’t
want all that money to be for nothing—

Natalie Shapero
Vulnerability is a practice. It's not a destination.
minha barriga (lar tanto do medo como do desejo)
- Tomasz Jędrowski, Nadando no Escuro (2024)
Era assim que eu vivia naquela época: por meio dos livros.
- Tomasz Jędrowski, Nadando no Escuro (2024)
Eu sentia um ressentimento vago em relação a mim mesmo, uma alienação em relação ao meu corpo de vinte e dois anos.

- Tomasz Jędrowski, Nadando no Escuro (2024)
haiku /ˈhaɪ.kuː/> n. (pl. same
or haikus) a Japanese poem 
of seventeen syllables, in 
three lines of five, seven, 
and five. 

dog /dɑːɡ/> n. poet 


Homework 

I don’t know that word 
But I’m completely certain 
I didn’t eat it


Returning 

Whenever you leave 
The wonder of your return 
Almost makes things whole 


In: Coleman, Jamie. What I Lick Before Your Face ... and Other Haikus By Dogs. London: Bantam Press, 2018.
Erik Kain nails his analysis of

From Season 4, Episode 9 and
House of the Dragon Season 3, Episode 1.
You can dream he's yours

Somewhere, there’s a room where things go 
to lose their names. 

- Cameron Awkward-Rich
You have to understand that there are many 
rooms. Each of them operates by other laws. 
Here, once you name a thing, you can’t take it 
back. It has its own life now, one that moves 
along without concern for you. At first, you go 
around talking to the trees & for just a moment 
they turn to face you.

Cameron Awkward-Rich
Yesterday down at the canal
Frank O'Hara

You say that everything is very simple and interesting
it makes me feel very wistful, like reading a great Russian novel does
i am terribly bored
sometimes it is like seeing a bad movie
other days, more often, it's like having an acute disease of the kidney
god knows it has nothing to do with the heart
nothing to do with people more interesting than myself
yak yak
that's an amusing thought
how can anyone be more amusing than oneself
how can anyone fail to be
can i borrow your forty-five
i only need one bullet preferably silver
if you can't be interesting at least you can be a legend
(but i hate all that crap)
Mechanics
Carl Phillips

   I remember almost nothing now
of who he was, or how I was,
around him. I can make that matter,
or I don’t have to, it doesn’t
   have to matter,
any more than the small
moth I watched struggling in
what appeared to be—torn and
otherwise empty—an abandoned
web: there was time, yet,
I might have freed it, but even
in abandonment, in what had
   been abandoned—the web,
maybe, but now the moth
for sure—I saw the ghost of purpose
still having a purpose—hard not
to respect that. It’s as if
the mind somewhere
   means to shut down memory,
that way preventing us from
understanding too clearly
our own unhappiness, and
in place of memory, offers up
   belief. We believe we’re happy.
Life doesn’t rhyme.
Life is poetry, not math.

Andrea Gibson
Tadpole
Andrea Gibson

A tadpole doesn’t know
it’s gonna grow bigger.
It just swims,
and figures limbs
are for frogs.
People don’t know
the power they hold.
They just sing hymns,
and figure saving
is for god.
Forgive me for inviting you into the unsafety of language.
Maryhilda Obasiota Ibe
we are a concerning type of forever
jason b. crawford
Apocrypha
Rae Armantrout

Dead satellite speaks.

Person with unique
blood type discovered.

Rodents evolving in real time.

Ways humans can escape
the earth.

___

Joints grind like
shot brakes.

Food ignites
in our stomachs.

But we’re still muffin-bunnies,
muddle-buckets,

cuddle-chunks.
Then Again
Rae Armantrout

I prefer what’s centripetal
or recursive,

what bends inward
like a shell’s ridges

because meaning is half
déjà vu.
___

Then again
I like what’s loose,

far-flung, and dubious

like rumor
or cottonwood chaff

because meaning is promiscuous.
It is a joy to be hidden and disaster not to be found.
Donald Winnicott
Each of us at each other’s backs
whispering over and over and over,

Live. Live. Live.

Andrea Gibson
Pick me up in a truck with that bumper sticker that says,
“It is no measure of good health
to be well adjusted to a sick society.”

Andrea Gibson
You are not alone

in wondering who will be convicted of the crime
of insisting you keep loading your grief
into the chamber of your shame.

You are not weak

just because your heart feels so heavy.

Andrea Gibson
Some of us know Love

is not the only closet
we will be told never to come out of.
There is also the closet of Grief.
The closet of Sorrow.
The closet of Panic.

Andrea Gibson
My panic is not a lifeguard,
but you can’t tell my panic that.
My panic googled, “How to perform CPR on yourself.”

Andrea Gibson
busy with alone
- danez smith
A atomização e a narcisização crescente da sociedade nos ensurdece perante a voz do outro. Levam igualmente à perda da empatia. Hoje, cada um presta homenagem ao culto de si mesmo. Cada um performa e se produz. Não é a personalização algorítmica da rede, mas o desaparecimento do outro, a incapacidade de ouvir atentamente, que é responsável pela crise da democracia.

- Byung-Chul Han, Infocracia: digitalização e a crise da democracia (2022)
As coisas não são todas tão compreensíveis e dizíveis quanto geralmente nos fazem crer.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Tell all the truth but tell it slant.
Emily Dickinson
Hedgehog
Paul Muldoon

The snail moves like a
Hovercraft, held up by a
Rubber cushion of itself,
Sharing its secret

With the hedgehog. The hedgehog
Shares its secret with no one.
We say, Hedgehog, come out
Of yourself and we will love you.

We mean no harm. We want
Only to listen to what
You have to say. We want
Your answers to our questions.

The hedgehog gives nothing
Away, keeping itself to itself.
We wonder what a hedgehog
Has to hide, why it so distrusts.

We forget the god
Under this crown of thorns.
We forget that never again
Will a god trust in the world.
When I sleep I am hungry.
I dream I am eating light.

James Tate
Sailor’s Song 
Jen Bartman

I am rowing my teacup 
in space. 

Still, sadness 
makes me tired. 

There’s nothing to do 
out here but wait 

until another frightening carnation 
blooms 

in the field
of frightening carnations. 
Inside the dark estrangement
sheltering me from people not

unlike me
I can only hope I do what matters

make my mother proud

Kevin Simmonds
My Wifi can take me out of here
anytime    so can my credit score

Kevin Simmonds
The lessons are getting harder.
Cintia Santana
One must be drenched in words.
Life is too scattered for me to savor it any more.

Bill Yarrow
N’ayons pas peur d’etre heureux,
c’est juste un bon moment a passer

Romain Gary
Playing Army
Donovan McAbee

I died better than anybody.
My older brother said so.
He shot me from around
the corner of the house,
Pow-Pow-Pow, in quick succession.
As my body arched,
floating back towards the earth,
my rifle rolling up through the air,
all their mouths stood agape
to witness such fluid grace.
I was so damn good
every kid on the block
wanted to shoot me.

Cape Fear, S01E04

Gente, é óbvio que eu não estou falando de quem precisa seriamente [de medicação psiquiátrica], porque tem gente que precisa. Então apaga isso da mente.
- Viviane Mosé, Sem Censura (04/06/2026)

Tá bem, vou apagar.
Shame is the most powerful force in the universe. It can make a man deny his own eyes, his own heart, his own skin.

- Edmund White, The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)
Gay life is a series of reinventions. We leave our families of origin to find our families of choice, and in doing so, we have to invent the very language of our relationships.

- Edmund White, States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)
We were the first generation to define ourselves by our sexuality and the first to be destroyed by it.
- Edmund White, The Farewell Symphony (1997)
If you are a monster, you are at least unique; if you are like everyone else, you are a cliché.
- Edmund White, The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)
I envy people who can remember the order in which things happened in their lives. I can't. For me the past is a solid wall of portraits, all looking at me simultaneously.

- Edmund White, A Boy's Own Story (1982)
A liberdade individual do sujeito existe na brecha do processo de freios e contrapesos entre os poderes [do Estado]. É isso que cria o Estado de Direito. O Estado de Direito não é criado por um poder acima dos outros e que se acha absoluto.

- Luiz Felipe Pondé, Linhas Cruzadas (18/06/2026)
Por que motivo a longevidade é mais importante do que o prazer?
- João Pereira Coutinho, Linhas Cruzadas (18/06/2026)
A gente é uma espécie assustada, acuada.
- Luiz Felipe Pondé, Linhas Cruzadas (18/06/2026)
Ah, as palavras, se não houvesse o risco, 
eu diria todas

Darcy França Denófrio
O espelho esperando o reflexo da face humana, sempre tão incerta da sua imagem.
Julia Hartwig
Pois não buscamos o que é perfeito, buscamos o que resta da incessante procura.
Czesław Miłosz
Aprendemos tanto, você sabe, tanto.
Como aos poucos o que não se poderia tirar de nós
É tirado, pessoas, arredores.
E o coração não falece quando se pensa que deveria

Czesław Miłosz
Onde quer que esteja, em qualquer lugar
na Terra, escondo dos outros a certeza de
que n ã o s o u d a q u i.
Como se tivesse sido enviado para absorver
o máximo das cores, sons, cheiros, sabores,
provar de tudo o que é
reservado ao Homem, converter o vivido
num registo mágico e levá-lo para lá, de onde
parti.

Czesław Miłosz
Ele próprio só sabia cerrar os dentes, aguentar e
esperar que a velhice inviabilizasse os dramas

Czesław Miłosz
Toda parte era parte alguma e parte alguma, toda parte.
Czesław Miłosz
If we run fast enough
the winds will not catch us.

- Beth Rollins
Sendo eu mais doméstica do
que intelectual,
Não escrevo jamais de forma
consciente e raciocinada, e sim
impelida por um impulso incontrolável.
Sendo assim, tenho a
consciência de ser autêntica.

Cora Coralina
amasso o silencio
- conceição evaristo
How language constantly revises the mind.
Maggie Smith
Now that I have no other mind
to which I might apply my own,
I polish it to near-shining.
Thoughts come away
cleaner and cleaner.
If I lean in close enough,
I can see my reflection.

Maggie Smith
Oh self
Maggie Smith
I’ve always thought of who I am
as being concentrated in my head & chest,

as if there’s a waterline at my rib cage
& contrary to their density, thoughts

& feelings stay afloat.

- Maggie Smith
— O ouro? 
— Eu o detesto como vocês detestam Deus. 

Charles Baudelaire
Dá mil beijos, depois outros cem, dá
muitos mil, depois outros sem fim

- Catulo
I don’t think we need to know what we’re afraid of, 
but if you’re afraid of something, feel it

Bryce Emley
Diferentemente do poder, o respeito não é necessariamente uma relação assimétrica. Sente-se, de fato, frequentemente respeito por pessoas exemplares ou por superiores, mas o respeito recíproco, que se baseia em uma relação simétrica de reconhecimento, é fundamentalmente possível.

- Byung-Chul Han, No enxame: perspectivas do digital (2013)
lugares em que
você sabe que
não vai ser
feliz mas
vai

- gregorio duvivier
Quem é este que me olha do outro lado?
Machado de Assis
Em que espelho ficou perdida
a minha face?

Cecília Meireles
Lo único que ha cambiado es el espejo

Não adianta pegar uma pessoa famosa na internet e fazer um filme, porque não rola. Ela é famosa ali, naquele... É como um cisne, famoso cisne da Grace Kelly: um cisne fora da lagoa é um pato desengonçado, né? Então ele tem que ficar ali.
- Miguel Falabella, Roda Viva (15/06/2026)


Em terra firme, onde caminham as pessoas comuns, o cisne é desajeitado, até ridículo. Quando sobe a margem rebolando, parece dolorosamente com outro tipo de ave, não é mesmo?
- Príncipe Albert, O Cisne (1956)
Let me glide noiselessly;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper,
Set ope the doors O soul.

Tenderly—be not impatient
(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh,
Strong is your hold O love).

Walt Whitman
Ripples of unseen rivers, tides of a current flowing, forever flowing
Walt Whitman
But O heart! heart! heart!
- Walt Whitman
Nas altas torres do corpo,
quis ficar. Amanhecia.
Todos os pombos voavam
das altas torres do corpo.

Carlos Nejar
He was looking at a beauty that was entirely self-contained, 
a beauty that required no justification outside of its own existence.

Yukio Mishima
They say orphans make the best lovers.
Because they have no names to save
or lose. They just have the dark
and the open hands.

Ocean Vuong
The map of your body is a map of my own home, a country 
I have memorized by heart, where every hill 
and valley is familiar and beloved.

Maggie Nelson
We are not going to be invisible anymore. 
We are going to be here,
and we are going to be loud,
and we are going to be loved.

Essex Hemphill
I didn't look like a woman anymore, but I didn't feel like a man either. 
I felt like a traveler who had crossed a border into a country 
where no one spoke my language.

Leslie Feinberg 

I speak here as a black lesbian feminist, lesbian because I love women, 
feminist because I am part of a movement to change the status of women, 
and black because that is my history.

Audre Lorde
And the Glass Slider was moving through the dark,
and I was thinking of you,
and how the world is a different shape
because we are both in it.

Frank O'Hara
I want to cry my grief and tell you why,
so that you will love me and weep for me 
in a night of nightingales and daggers.

Federico García Lorca
She was a person who could only be loved by those who were themselves complex
Virginia Woolf
The affection of a mature intellect for a budding mind
it is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. 
It dictates and pervades great works of art...

Oscar Wilde
To be with you this morning is a holy thing
beyond the power of a church to give, or a priest to tell.

Emily Dickinson
We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, 
North and South excursions making.

Walt Whitman
That you are a woman is no obstacle
to my loving you; for the soul lacks gender,
and the physical is far from the spirit.

Juana Inés de la Cruz
I am more dear to myself than I am used to be;
more than my usual self, my heart I nourish,
since you have held its core within your hand.

O loveliest boy that ever ran
Upon the earth since time began!
The sun, the full moon, and the stars
Are all your bright familiars...

Abu Nuwas
someone will remember us
even in another time

Sappho
El ojo que ves no es
ojo porque tú lo veas;
es ojo porque te ve.

Antonio Machado
even I who have no lover
I love this time
of new kimonos

- Ontsura
no wind, yet the windbells
keep on ringing

- shiren
now I return to the burning house
but where is the place I used to live?

- Kan-ami
the world so unsure, unknowable
the world so unsure, unknowable
who knows—our griefs may
hold our greatest hopes.

- zeami motokiyo
Town of Uneven Love (But All Love Is Uneven)
Anne Carson

If he had loved me he would have seen me.
At an upstairs window brow beating against the glass.
Town of the Noon Stack
Anne Carson

Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
It is very expensive he thought.
To come back.

Anne Carson
Just drop sin and go.
Anne Carson
On Hedonism
Anne Carson

Beauty makes me hopeless. I don’t care why anymore I just
want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to
wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a
heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead-calm sea. Desires as
round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what
falls.
Dois homens e uma teoria
AR

Quando me viram em uma relação amorosa com certa diferença de idade, algumas pessoas sentiram necessidade de me explicar a assimetria. Achei curioso. Não porque a assimetria não existisse, mas porque pareciam supor que ela lhes era visível e a nós, não.

Como se a diferença de idade, de experiência, de história ou de posição fosse algo que apenas um observador pudesse perceber. Ou pior, como se existisse um culpado na relação. Ou dois?

Mas nunca acreditei que o problema ético de uma relação pudesse ser resolvido pela simples identificação de uma diferença. As diferenças existem. Entre amantes, amigos, pais e filhos, professores e alunos, entre qualquer duas pessoas que se encontrem no mundo. Há assimetrias de idade, de desejo, de recursos, de conhecimento, de linguagem, de temperamento. Não conheço relação humana que não seja atravessada por alguma forma de desigualdade.

O que me interessa não é apenas a existência da assimetria e o que fazemos com ela: é ser julgado sem saber se temos consciência dela.

Nós sabemos. E nos perguntamos: Pode ser questionada? Pode ser renegociada? Há espaço para dizer não? Há espaço para mudar de ideia? Há respeito pela autonomia de cada um?

Uma relação não se torna ética porque é perfeitamente simétrica. Tampouco se torna abusiva apenas porque contém uma diferença visível. Há relações aparentemente equilibradas que são feitas de manipulação e silêncio. E há relações atravessadas por diferenças importantes que são sustentadas por diálogo, consciência, cuidado e consentimento.

Talvez por isso eu tenha desconfiado quando tentaram resumir uma relação concreta a uma única palavra. As palavras são necessárias. Os conceitos também. Mas às vezes eles chegam antes da escuta. E quando isso acontece, deixam de ser instrumentos de compreensão e passam a funcionar como sentenças.

A assimetria existe. Sempre existirá. A questão nunca foi essa. A questão é como duas pessoas a atravessam juntas.
On Major and Minor
Anne Carson

Major things are wind, evil, a good fighting horse, prepositions,
inexhaustible love, the way people choose their king. Minor
things include dirt, the names of schools of philosophy, mood
and not having a mood, the correct time. There are more major
things than minor things overall, yet there are more minor
things than I have written here, but it is disheartening to list
them. When I think of you reading this, I do not want you to
be taken captive, separated by a wire mesh lined with glass from
your life itself, like some Elektra
                                                 Troubled.

… always the hard word box they wanted,

- Anne Carson, “Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings”, Plainwater (1995)
                                             He is troubled by words.

… in public words formed a clump in him.

- Anne Carson, “Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings”, Plainwater (1995)
Betwixt Thee and Me Let There Be Truth

                             Despite his professed cult of youth and pleasure, he knows moral worry.

At the border crossing all I could hear was your pulse
   and the wind combing along my earbone
     like antimatter

- Anne Carson, “Mimnermos: The Brainsex Paintings”, Plainwater (1995)
The Thing Is
Ellen Bass

to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you down like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.


Tip Toe, S01E02

Trooper, she didn’t just walk into the room,
she brought the whole sky with her.
And when she laughed, I swear to you,
my heart did a backflip into a pool of golden retriever puppies.

Andrea Gibson
we are going to be so happy
the birds will look at us and say
damn look at them
they are doing it right
they are doing it with all their feathers

CAConrad
I want to kiss you in the middle of the supermarket
Chen Chen
Do you think there is anywhere, in any language, a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you, as the sun
reaches out, as it warms you?

Mary Oliver
The rivers are frozen ropes pulling the island down.
Natalie Diaz
We are the millions who do not count,
the numbers missing from the charts.
We love in the shadow of your laws,
outlaws of the heart,
counting our dead by the thousands.

Essex Hemphill
Leo, you're queer in 2026. You're a political act.
- Melba in Tip Toe, S01E01
MELBA
I live in hope.

LEO
Don't, Melba.

Tip Toe, S01E01
Roux
Lucas Jacob

From the French,
and so r-o-u-x, not
an Old English name
for misgiving, though
it would be nice
to be able to roux
the day,
smoothing it out
as it darkens.
now         the wordless apples
- jenny grassl
JOÃO VICENTE
Eu lembro que, quando eu escrevia poesia pequeno, eu era muito dramático.
"Ai, como é triste ser triste", sabe?

GREGORIO DUVIVIER
Uma melancolia estética.

Não Importa, 11/06/2026
GREGORIO DUVIVIER
[Eu] 'tava [com] uma mente muito fragilizada, claramente, ali. Eu caí na poesia.

JOÃO VICENTE
Você caiu na poesia? Graças a Deus. 

GREGORIO DUVIVIER
Que é uma forma também de abraçar os derrotados.

JOÃO VICENTE
É uma forma de você sofrer com alguém sem ninguém.

Não Importa, 11/06/2026
gustavo keno eu não te conhecia
wanessa wolf eu te amo
Under the evening moon
the snail
      is stripped to the waist.

Kobayashi Issa
All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
    killing mosquitoes.

Kobayashi Issa
Marcia Riederer/ Ocean Photographer of the Year

LA Express Carwash 
Ross John Farrar

I’ve been losing so much lately. The designer sun glasses, only had them
a week. I lost the keys to my office, then a library book, The Dictionary of
American Slang. A page dog-eared at “Garbo: Half an English muffin.” So,
I bought ginkgo biloba & tried to stop drinking.

I’ve almost given up caring about what I have, since it’s just going
to be me until I’m no longer. Someone said we only lose things we don’t
care about, but I’ve lost hair & skin cells & so many perfect days.

We were saying goodbye. You were soon to drop me off for good, but first
we had to visit the car wash. Mercy, I thought.

Men in green & white jumpers motioned us in, the wheels catching track,
which made us feel like floating, so we floated through like a submarine.
A machine came down like the leafless organs of climbing plants, giant
soapy tendrils licked the glass.

All I wanted was for the car to stop, for us to sit there in the dark, watching
bubbles on the windshield grow & pop. We bobbed forward, still trapped,
while water evaporated all around us.
Please, let me keep this.
I’ve been trying to tell you that what I have
now is what I lost

Sarah Bates
Aniline Dye 
Albe Harlow

who
knew
the violence

   not only
picked

the heads
but counted them
       counted them

as they colored
  magenta
my garden
dearest madonna
by AR

movement does not replace language 
movement 
is what language does we

are never out of language we may
be out of words but never 
out of meaning there 

are languages that do not know
they are languages 
too
 
silence

is a language
shutting itself

to listen
to you
only love can be so bizarre
女夫鹿や
毛に毛が揃うて
毛むつかし

meotojika ya
ke ni ke ga soroute
ke mutsukashi

A pair of deer rub-
bing hair against each other's
hard so hard to please

Dois cervos amantes—
pelo contra pelo, alinhados.
Tão difíceis.

Bashō
You ask the sky 
               to lean in. 

Cory Hutchinson-Reuss
as life itself grew ever more fictitious,
perpendicular to time

- maggie millner
Chamando de pensamento o que renova o pensamento
Henri Meschonnic
life is under construction the scaffolding
does not complete the forgotten
moments so tiny
as the bits of air that
make up the sky we don’t see them
one by one since we are
inside
it’s when we block the sky with
our hand
that we age
all of a sudden

- henri meschonnic
I am a whirlwind
of meaning
I unravel
in what words
can no longer say

Henri Meschonnic
Meschonnic / Saussure
por AR

a linguagem não diz o mundo
ela o faz passar
no corpo do discurso em curso
onde o sujeito se perde
e continua
all of life
 is a waiting room 
the sky is blue I am blue
 it’s raining I’m raining 
I drive silence into my words 

Henri Meschonnic
Is abstraction still luxury
in a world in which—imagine—you don’t
feel watched? In the way that moral preferences are
aesthetic judgments, or how metaphor has gone out
of style.

Cindy Juyoung Ok
To carry words or let words be carried away. A giving up—but also: a giving.
Chris Campanioni
How to tell time from the body. I mean the difference between time and the body, the
body and time.

Chris Campanioni
oh god as in / there is no turning back 

oh god as in / I had no choice 

oh god as in / this was going to happen anyway 

Emily Zogbi
The placeholder word for all the things we cannot name is God.
Anne Champion
It’s one thing to have words.
And then there’s meaning.

Anne Champion
It is possible to live a whole life
with a pain lodged in the throat
without the language
to cough it out.

Anne Champion
and I knew so certainly
there were unevolved things in me
that I haven’t found the sound
or typography for

Anne Champion
Death of a Sasquatch 

Attention must be paid, said his wife,
 writing to the scientists. 

It’s possible to die from lack of recognition
she went on, convinced, 

        but day after day 
he sat lumpish on the lip of the crater 

until he went down to the basement 
of his mind, where he did not exist.
I am

               looking

for a sign.   

Jess Turner
Lucidez
por AR

Investigo para saber até onde posso saber.
Heisenberg. Achar novas formas de ignorância.
Nietzsche. Arte para não perecermos.
Stevens. O real habitado.

Ciência. Correlatos neurais da atração.

Platão não sai da linguagem.
Derrida. Wittgenstein. Heidegger.

A filosofia não supera a poesia.
Ela é poesia. A religião é poesia.

imagens / imagems / inmagens
Ricoeur. O símbolo.
Borges. Beckett. Kafka.

Enquanto houver linguagem, não haverá posse do absoluto.
Absoluto? Ao nomear, simplifico:
Logo, há perda.

Investigo para saber até onde posso saber.
Ainda que atravessado pelo amor, 
pelo sofrimento, pela beleza
e pelo orgasmo.
My mouth, a moth.
Your mouth, lit til noon. Moon on the sheets. 
Spill. Lull. Lips. So much symmetry in hands. 
When they touch: a reflection one may hold.
When you’re gone I feel like a lonely tylenol.

Stephanie Lane Sutton
Querido diário,

Já não me escapava que sou medíocre.
Fui revisar os fatos: eles concordaram.
O estranho foi ter amado
gente tão improvável.

- AR
Make too me acceptable at the end of time
John Berryman
Surprise me on some ordinary day
with a blessing gratuitous. 

John Berryman
As if only perfected by neon now only.
This moment. This otherwise.
Into which woundedly

mirrors decline now. This otherwise.
Into which darkfall
yet flowers yet

flowers forever.

Andrew Maxwell
Already that

distance in which you will
no longer will
yet will

therefore remain. 

Andrew Maxwell
One breathless word therein. Is therein. Is nothing.
Andrew Maxwell
when the last speaker of a language dies,
a hue vanishes from the spectrum of visible light

- arthur sze
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.   
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,   
we ourselves flash and yearn

John Berryman
Não há como determinar objetivamente o que é votar melhor. Porque a pessoa considera que votar melhor é votar igual a ela. Você pode imaginar no mundo ideal de Platão — mas, na realidade, não há parâmetro objetivo para dizer se você votou melhor.

- Luiz Felipe Pondé em Linhas Cruzadas, 11/06/2026
Se alguém ainda acha que existe o mocinho e o bandido na política brasileira, 
tá precisando crescer, né?

- Luiz Felipe Pondé em Linhas Cruzadas, 11/06/2026
It can be hard to wake in the middle of someone
else’s leaving. Impossible even to carry that burden.

- Jason B. Crawford
until language completes itself as cyclical silence
- andrew mossin
Blessed are we the ephemeral who can contemplate movement as an image of eternity and follow intently the parabola of the arrow until it is buried beneath the line of the horizon.

- José Lezama Lima
A poem: an aviary without cages.
Gustaf Sobin
The muses don't descend: they're omnipresent.
He spoke
I listened.
I spoke,
he listened.
In between
we both
heard almost
nothing. 

robert lax
sometimes i’ve tried to see more than i saw
robert lax
to be “enlightened” is not to shine; nor to bring multitudes to the hill
where one sits cross-legged, to listen.

it is rather to know what one is doing (& even, perhaps, to enjoy it).

- robert lax