THREE POEMS by EVELYN BAUER
In defense of queering the map
But here queering means something
different so when you place the little pin on the map
it ends up a few miles down, or on another continent, or
it gets lost among a swirl of colors and textures.
What is orientation anyway.
And here queering is physical and every spot is
filled with faggots kissing each other,
every bench has a cum stain, every bush is teeming with cruisers.
sunlight is a new color and it doesn’t matter.
Nighttime is safe and has always been ours.
And by queering the map I mean that every street and city changes,
some even disappear. The whole world changes
and is reborn and remade better.
Distance means something different now,
nobody is turned away from the hospital.
And when the police come, because they always do,
they will find nothing but an empty room,
a street so clean it’s like nobody has ever walked it before.
and when they turn to leave there is just another wall.
it doesn’t matter if it was there before.
And when you open up the website queeringthemap.com
the entire city is awash with black pins,
there’s nothing left for them here,
no location information to steal
because everywhere is a queer moment.
Radical Softness as a Boundless Form of Resistance
is what i call it when my cock
doesn’t get hard despite the addition of a fourth finger scouring my prostate.
must be the estrogen, or the zoloft, or it just feels better this way.
radical softness is a tired trope anyway. we didn’t get anywhere by being soft
well we only kind of did. i don’t practice radical softness but i still miss being able to cum ropes.
radical hardness is when a gay man grabs my tit without asking and i stand still.
radical hardness is a gun or a knife or a raised finger.
radical softness is not doing anything while our people are still dying.
there’s some hypocrisy there but a mountain is still
and not soft.
radical hardness is when the blows hurt enough.
when the full fist, knuckles and all, fits.
radical softness is licking wounds.
fuck passivity, put the heterosexuals against the wall and fuck me against it after.
Pilgrimage
After Jackson Mac Lowjust petulant petals patter moss
venerable distant milky blackness rushing
slick crushed blood sternum brachia
cerebral somnus or different
speckled obsidian
sediment washed rulers no.
fleeting power held clutched hands
branching hours outlet beige
crumbled popcorn sickly white
tapping years other things
grass seeds empty
enough raindrops
red rubber bowls
seven loose angles add
petrified stolen cinnamon
frames ligament twine tense relax
prayer means itself
conjunctions and the is of yesterday
welcome pilgrim
rest your head
Evelyn Bauer is a writer, bookseller, and wine punk living on stolen land in so called 'New England.' She is often found reviewing books, petting cats, and listening to experimental music. You can find some of her tabletop roleplaying games at eeveeholdsredbull.itch.io, and her poems in Moral Crema, Corporeal Lit Mag, and Not Deer Mag. Find her on twitter at @neo_cubist.