queer ecology
Evelyn Berry
don't be surprised: i'm a redneck wussy
               moonshinesloppy with a limp wrist
town crier sobbing on the street corner
they'll get used to the lipstick
same like the scupadine's fleshsweet pulp
i'm here
sure as roadkill                 sure as O
                                            possum nightslick slurping bloodticks

i'm everywhere                                 like a dandelion falling apart
in the wind's embrace                     i'm haunting the family tree
               born to this ecology         this bloodied
patch of dirt                     go ahead spit me roadside
like a boiled peanut shell sucked of salt

crown me queen of the chitlin strut

don't be surprised the ground's so fertile
young queers been fucking in the fields
since the first sin                                     first garden delight

first adam's apple taken in the mouth                  first seed spilled

if they bury enough wild queers in the dirt
one's sure to sprout in their backyard
From the book GRIEF SLUT / Sundress Publications
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Although I grew up in South Carolina, I feel like I don't always belong in the South. Queer Ecology, which is a queer study of home, examines that tentative belonging. How might I, as a trans woman, reclaim the images, language, and traditions of this region without being buried by them? What does it mean to love a home that doesn't always love you back?
 
Color photograph of John Burnside
"John Burnside, Author of Black Cat Bone, Dies Aged 69"

"The Scottish writer, whose career spanned more than 35 years, was one of only four people to have won both of the UK’s most prestigious poetry prizes for the same book. Though mainly known for his poetry, Burnside wrote in many forms, including fiction and memoir, across a career that spanned more than three decades."

via THE GUARDIAN
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What Sparks Poetry:
Orchid Tierney on "a field guide to future flora"

"however distributed vegetal cognition is, plants are nonetheless remarkable sensing and sensate beings, who invite speculation as to who we—the weirdos of this world—are if we are not already communal thinkers. so: to look upon a plant with an appreciation that its own mind is radically different is a terse exercise in the acceptance of its unknowability."
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