Yani Robinson. I like the title. Feels appropriate. Maybe this is what happens after a birthday and you’re home alone after the party. Except someone is helping pay the rent. So you’re not alone, just not together together. Somebody else on another floor is getting together. Habit, boredom, loneliness, masturbation. It’s not your party.

Lou Sullivan’s Birthday 

Sometimes when you’re broke
and another someone moves
in to help with rent

you wind up awake
at four AM, vaguely coked up
listening to two

boys have sex in the room
below you. Something tells you
to jerk off – why not

so you, on your phone
watch a cock appear in and
out of some stud’s mouth.

You thrust helplessly
into your hand, willing it
to be your lover’s

tongue and fist, but it’s not
going anywhere.

Click to access nepantla.ajournal.pdf

“NEPANTLA:
A JOURNAL DEDICATED TO QUEER POETS OF COLOR

WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE
Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color is an intentional community space. Our mission is to nurture, celebrate, and preserve diversity within the queer poetry community. Through this journal, we are attempting to center the lives and experiences of QPOC in contemporary America. Thus, we view the journal (and our reading series) as part of a whole artistic project and not individual fragments of work. We believe that (here) the high lyric must encounter colloquial narrative. Here, we must provide space to celebrate both our similarities and our differences. We are one community with an array of experiences; we write in different formats, in different tones, of different circumstances. Nepantla is not the sort of journal that can project a singular voice (not if we want to reflect the various realities of our community). Nepantla is a journal of multiplicity, of continual reinvention.

ACCOUNTABILITY CULTURE
Nepantla is NOT an apolitical literary journal. We stand strongly against racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, xenophobia, etc. We do NOT believe in the notion of “craft” as an excuse to justify oppressive language. If (for some reason) you, the reader, feel discriminated against by the language used in our poems then please let us know. Keep us accountable. We have done our best to provide a safe space for the QPOC community. We hope you enjoy the fierceness!”