Queer Trivia Night

By Jenny Johnson

for Nica, Mary, Ryan, et al.

A friend on a rival team confesses
they’ve always been into it.
As a kid, they locked themselves in a closet
to read Trivial Pursuit cards.
They wanted to know everything.

Their team is named Shooting Nudes.
We are Butch Believers.
The next category is Famous Dykes.
The whole bar is packed and smells like
bike sweat and Cosmo slushies.

Our best guess is that it was Audre Lorde
in ’89 advocating for Palestine.
On the fly, we struggle to spell
Stormé DeLarverie, but we’re hoping
bad handwriting hides it, huddling closer

so no one hears our answers.
Meanwhile, the National Park Service
erases the letter T in twenty places
from the Stonewall Monument website.
Slime mold? Whiptail lizards? The category is

Queer Ecology. Now, a federal directive
threatens to cut gender-affirming
care for youth in our city.
The category is Gay for Pay.
Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Hilary Swank.

Cleverness I know can feel exclusive
but here I lean into my friends’ literacies,
their wisdoms my shelter.
The forty somethings know the local lore,
the bygone parties: Donny’s, Pegasus,

Operation Sappho, while The Gen Z kids ace
the tech round, scribbling the name of
a translesbian hacktivist on a canceled sci-fi show.
It turns out being an autodidact is
the unspoken prerequisite for being queer in America.

Will we nerd ourselves into futures
of intergenerational knowing?
In our time, the Press 3 option
of the youth suicide hotline
was created and deleted.

In booths with curly fries,
we turn to each other and say:
Kiki. Bussy. Bulldagger.
Kitty Tsui. Vaginal (Crème) Davis.
Truths our bodies internalized arise

in quick crescendos like this one:
Bernard Mayes founded
the first suicide prevention hotline
in the country. I know this because
he was a dean at my college and the first

audaciously out educator I ever met.
Monthly he held a donut hour,
I was closeted then, so I showed up early
to squeeze onto a cramped couch
and listen: In 1961, he leafletted streets

with a phone number safe to dial
and then waited by a red rotary phone
certain that many would call.
The category is Gay Rage.
Name the band and the song:

Bikini Kill, “Suck My Left One”
Bronski Beat, “Why?”
Princess Nokia, “Tomboy”
Planningtorock, “Get Your
Fckin Laws Off My Body”

I’ve always joked that my head is filled with trivial trivia. I have a bad habit of responding to almost any conversation with, “Did you know…?” People inevitably tell me I should go on Jeopardy!—and I always laugh, because I know I’d be terrible at it. The moment a question is asked under pressure, my mind goes blank, even though I can often answer the questions effortlessly when I’m watching from my couch.

I’ve only participated in a Queer Trivia Night once. I can’t even remember the name of our team, but I do remember who was on it: museum professionals and librarians. Unsurprisingly, we won with ease. What stuck with me, though, wasn’t the victory. It was the realization that queer trivia isn’t really about knowing random facts—it’s about shared memory, survival, and the way knowledge circulates within our community. That’s what makes Jenny Johnson’s poem “Queer Trivia Night” resonate so deeply, and why it feels less like a novelty poem and more like a quiet manifesto.

About the Poem

Jenny Johnson’s “Queer Trivia Night” uses the format of a bar trivia competition to explore something much bigger than questions and answers: how queer knowledge is created, shared, and fought for. The poem moves quickly from playful details—team names, sticky tables, categories like “Famous Dykes” and “Queer Ecology”—to the sobering reality that queer history and queer bodies are constantly under threat. The fun of trivia is always shadowed by erasure: the National Park Service quietly removing the “T” from Stonewall’s history, and federal directives endangering gender-affirming care.

What makes the poem especially powerful is how it reframes trivia as survival. Queer people become autodidacts not because they love facts for their own sake (though many of us do), but because knowing is how we find each other and how we stay alive. The poem’s categories—Gay for Pay, Gay Rage, Famous Dykes—aren’t just cheeky; they map a curriculum of lived experience, culture, protest, and grief.

Johnson also highlights intergenerational knowledge. Older queers remember bars and parties that no longer exist; younger queers know digital spaces and activist figures from canceled shows. Together, they form a collective mind that shelters them when laws and institutions fail. Even the list of names and slang—“Kiki. Bussy. Bulldagger. Kitty Tsui. Vaginal (Crème) Davis.”—becomes a kind of chant, proof that language itself carries history in the body.

One of the most moving moments comes with the story of Bernard Mayes and the first suicide prevention hotline. It connects trivia to testimony: a fact becomes a memory, and a memory becomes a lifeline. In this poem, knowing things is not about winning a round—it’s about refusing to disappear.

“Queer Trivia Night” suggests that queer community is built out of shared literacy: knowing the songs, the scandals, the heroes, the dangers. The poem asks whether we can “nerd ourselves into futures of intergenerational knowing,” and the answer feels cautiously hopeful. As long as we keep telling each other what we know, something survives.

About the Poet

Jenny Johnson is an American poet whose work often blends humor, pop culture, and sharp political awareness with deep emotional intelligence. Her poems frequently explore queer identity, community, and the ways personal memory intersects with public history. She is known for writing that feels conversational and accessible while still being formally and intellectually rigorous.

Johnson’s poetry is especially attentive to how knowledge circulates—through classrooms, friendships, activism, and everyday talk. In “Queer Trivia Night,” she captures both the joy of shared culture and the urgency of preserving it in a time of erasure. Her work reminds us that poetry can hold facts and feelings at once, and that even something as silly as trivia can become a record of who we are and how we endure.

Young Republican
by Randall Mann

September, 1984.
The heat was like a ray-gun.
The Communists had much to fear:
His name was Ronald Reagan—

and so was mine in middle school,
throughout the mock debate.
The recreation hall was full
of democratic hate.

I ended all my thoughts with well,
declared my love for Nancy.
My stifling suit was poly-wool.
I sounded like a pansy.

But teachers didn’t seem to care
that Ronald Reagan looked
a little fey, and had some flair.
I wanted to be liked,

the boy who mowed the neighbors’ yards,
the new kid in Ocala—
while Mondale read his index cards,
I sipped a Coca Cola

that I had spiked with Mother’s gin,
and frowned, and shook my head.
Oh Walter, there you go again,
I smiled and vainly said.

I reenacted getting shot.
I threw benign grenades.
I covered up what I forgot.
I never mentioned AIDS.

⸻

About the Poem

“Young Republican” is sharp, funny, and devastating all at once—a poem that understands how performance can become survival. Set in September 1984, the poem unfolds during a middle-school mock debate at the height of the Reagan era. The speaker shares a name with Ronald Reagan, a coincidence that becomes both costume and shield.

What Mann captures so precisely is the choreography of belonging: the poly-wool suit, the rote praise of Nancy Reagan, the rehearsed disdain for Walter Mondale, the Coke spiked with gin (childhood bravado masquerading as adulthood). This is a boy learning how to read the room—and how to disappear inside it.

The poem’s humor (“I sounded like a pansy”) is double-edged. On the surface, it’s self-deprecating; beneath it, the line exposes how queerness is policed through voice, gesture, and tone. Teachers “didn’t seem to care” that Reagan “looked / a little fey,” while the boy himself desperately wants to be liked. The implication is clear: effeminacy can be tolerated when it’s power-adjacent, abstracted, or safely ironic—but not when it belongs to a vulnerable kid trying to pass.

And then there’s the ending. The final line—“I never mentioned AIDS.”—lands like a trapdoor. Everything before it has been satire and social observation; suddenly the stakes snap into focus. The poem becomes unmistakably LGBTQ+. In 1984, AIDS was not merely absent from middle-school debate—it was actively erased, even as it ravaged queer communities. Silence here is not ignorance; it’s learned omission. The speaker understands, even then, what must not be said if he wants to remain acceptable.

This is why the poem resonates so deeply as a queer text. It isn’t about desire in any overt sense. It’s about concealment, mimicry, and the emotional cost of aligning oneself with systems that promise safety while denying truth. The boy’s performance of conservatism isn’t ideological conviction—it’s camouflage.

“Young Republican” asks uncomfortable questions:

• What did we have to hide to be allowed in the room?
• What did we rehearse instead of telling the truth?
• And what names—personal or political—did we borrow in order to survive?

⸻

About the Poet

Randall Mann is an American poet known for his formally inventive, emotionally incisive work that often explores queerness, masculinity, memory, and cultural performance. His poems frequently engage pop culture and politics, using wit and structure to probe deeply personal experiences. Mann’s work is especially attuned to the ways language, roles, and social expectations shape queer lives—often revealing how humor and restraint coexist with grief and loss.

“Young Republican” is a quintessential example of Mann’s voice: controlled, ironic, and quietly devastating, leaving the reader to sit with what’s been said—and what was never allowed to be spoken.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

About the Poem

There are poems that announce themselves loudly, and then there are poems that arrive quietly—almost unnoticed—yet linger with us long after we’ve finished reading. “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is very much the latter. It asks us to slow down, to pause, to notice the beauty of stillness in a world that rarely allows it.

This short poem has become one of the most beloved in American literature not because it explains itself, but because it leaves space—for reflection, longing, and a kind of gentle ache that feels deeply human.

Published in 1923, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” describes a speaker who pauses during a winter journey to watch snow fall silently in the woods. The moment is hushed, intimate, almost secret. There is no audience, no obligation—just the speaker, the horse, and the softly filling woods.

What makes the poem so powerful is its tension. The woods are described as “lovely, dark and deep”—inviting, restful, and perhaps a little dangerous. They offer escape, quiet, even surrender. But the speaker does not remain. Instead, the poem ends with the now-famous lines:

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Those lines can be read many ways. On the surface, they suggest responsibility and duty. Beneath that, though, is a more complicated emotional truth: the recognition that rest and peace are desirable, but not always possible—not yet.

For many readers, the poem becomes a meditation on temptation, obligation, exhaustion, or even mortality. It doesn’t resolve those tensions. It simply names them—and then moves on.

For LGBTQ+ readers, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” can resonate in particularly meaningful ways.

The woods—beautiful, hidden, and private—can feel like a metaphor for inner truth or unspoken desire. They are a place away from watchful eyes, where one can pause and simply be. For those who have lived parts of their lives unseen or unacknowledged, that moment of stopping can feel deeply familiar.

And yet, the poem does not allow the speaker to stay. There are promises to keep. Expectations. Roles. Responsibilities. Many LGBTQ+ people know this tension well—the pull between authenticity and obligation, between rest and resilience, between longing and survival.

What’s striking, though, is that the poem does not judge the pause. The stopping itself is not framed as wrong. It is necessary. It is human. The speaker is allowed that moment of beauty and stillness before continuing on.

In that sense, the poem offers a quiet kind of grace. It reminds us that even when we must keep moving, even when the world demands our labor and endurance, we are still allowed moments of rest, reflection, and beauty. We are allowed to stop—if only briefly—and acknowledge what calls to us from within.

Sometimes faith, poetry, and queerness meet not in declarations, but in silence. In the hush of falling snow. In a pause on a dark road. In a recognition that the journey is long—and that rest, when it comes, is holy.

And still, gently, we go on.

About the Poet

Robert Frost is often remembered as a poet of rural New England, plain speech, and traditional forms. That reputation, while accurate, can also be misleading. Frost’s work is rarely simple. Beneath its conversational tone lie psychological depth, ambiguity, and emotional restraint.

While Frost did not publicly identify as queer, modern readers and scholars have long noted the emotional intensity of his male friendships and the recurring themes of solitude, secrecy, and inner division in his work. As with many writers of his era, what could not be openly named often found expression indirectly—through landscape, silence, and restraint.

Frost lived much of his life balancing contradictions: public success and private grief, traditional forms and modern anxieties, belonging and isolation. He experienced profound personal loss, including the deaths of several children and ongoing struggles with depression within his family.

In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
  The flying cloud, the frosty light:
  The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
  Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
  The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
  For those that here we see no more;
  Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
  And ancient forms of party strife;
  Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
  The faithless coldness of the times;
  Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
  The civic slander and the spite;
  Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
  Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
  Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

About the Poem

“Ring Out, Wild Bells” appears as Canto 106 in In Memoriam A.H.H., Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s long elegy written after the death of his close friend Arthur Henry Hallam. Though In Memoriam is rooted in private grief, this section widens its gaze outward, turning the passage of the year into a moral reckoning.

The poem imagines the ringing of New Year’s bells as an act of judgment and intention. The bells are not sentimental. They are commands. Tennyson calls on them to ring out falsehood, greed, violence, and despair—and to ring in truth, kindness, justice, and a more humane future.

What makes this poem endure is that it refuses to treat time as neutral. A new year does not simply arrive; it must be claimed.

Reflections on the Poem

Several stanzas feel almost unnervingly current, especially when read at the close of 2025.

In stanza 6, Tennyson urges us to:

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
 The civic slander and the spite;
 Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

This is a direct challenge to systems that elevate wealth, lineage, or power over decency. It speaks to a year in which money has purchased influence, policy, and silence—where hateful politics have been funded, amplified, and normalized. It speaks to economies shaped by bad decisions, reckless tariffs, and inflation that squeeze ordinary people while the rich continue to profit.

In stanza 7, the poem grows sharper still:

  Ring out the lust of gold, the care
  Of self, the thousand wars of old;
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

It is difficult not to hear this as an indictment of a world driven by hoarding, domination, and perpetual conflict. In 2025, we have seen how greed erodes empathy—and how fear is weaponized to strip away rights. LGBTQ+ lives and voices have once again been treated as expendable. Speech is constrained under the guise of “protection,” whether through laws silencing queer discussion in classrooms or the creeping normalization of censorship in digital spaces.

And yet, this poem does not collapse into despair.

Tennyson does not ask us to deny reality. He asks us to name it—and then to imagine its opposite loudly enough that it becomes possible.

To read “Ring Out, Wild Bells” at the end of this year is to acknowledge grief, anger, exhaustion, and frustration—and still insist that they are not the final word. Even if meaningful change requires patience. Even if justice must wait for ballots cast and counted in November. The act of hope itself becomes resistance.

About the Poet

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) served as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom for more than forty years, a role that placed him at the intersection of private emotion and public moral imagination. His poetry often wrestles with grief, doubt, faith, progress, and the ethical responsibilities of humanity in a changing world.

Tennyson lived what appears, by historical evidence, to be a conventionally heterosexual life. He married Emily Sellwood in 1850 and had two sons. There is no reliable documentation that he engaged in sexual relationships with men, and historians rightly avoid assigning him a modern sexual identity.

And yet, In Memoriam A.H.H.—written after the sudden death of his closest friend, Arthur Henry Hallam—stands as one of the most emotionally intimate poetic works in the English language. The poem is saturated with longing, devotion, bodily absence, and an ache that reshapes Tennyson’s understanding of love, faith, and even God. The depth of that attachment has invited generations of readers to recognize something essential: queer meaning is not limited to queer identity.

In the Victorian era, intense same-sex emotional bonds were expressed in ways that do not map neatly onto modern categories of sexuality. What In Memoriam demonstrates is that love between men—whether or not it was sexual—could be central, formative, and life-altering. The poem refuses to minimize that bond or explain it away. Instead, it treats male–male love as morally serious, spiritually significant, and worthy of public language.

For LGBTQ+ readers today, this matters deeply. In Memoriam reminds us that queer resonance often exists before the language to name it. It lives in grief that society cannot fully acknowledge, in devotion that exceeds acceptable boundaries, and in love that quietly insists on its own legitimacy. The poem makes space for readers who recognize themselves not because the poet shared their identity, but because he articulated truths about love and loss that transcend labels.

Tennyson’s work endures not because it offers easy answers, but because it allows human affection—especially between men—to be expansive, dignified, and real. In doing so, In Memoriam continues to ring with meaning for those whose loves have so often been denied language, history, or blessing.

A Christmas Carol

By Christina Rossetti

The Shepherds had an Angel,
The Wise Men had a star,
But what have I, a little child,
    To guide me home from far,
Where glad stars sing together
    And singing angels are?

Those Shepherds through the lonely night
    Sat watching by their sheep,
Until they saw the heavenly host
    Who neither tire nor sleep,
All singing “Glory, glory,”
    In festival they keep.

The Wise Men left their country
    To journey morn by morn,
With gold and frankincense and myrrh,
    Because the Lord was born:
God sent a star to guide them
    And sent a dream to warn.

My life is like their journey,
    Their star is like God’s book;
I must be like those good Wise Men
    With heavenward heart and look:
But shall I give no gifts to God?—
    What precious gifts they took!

⸻

About the Poem

Christina Rossetti’s A Christmas Carol is a quiet, contemplative Nativity poem—not focused on spectacle, but on belonging, guidance, and spiritual longing. Rather than centering angels or kings, Rossetti places herself—or the reader—in the role of “a little child,” asking a deeply human question: What guides me?

For many LGBTQ+ readers, that question resonates powerfully. The shepherds and the wise men are given signs—angels, stars, dreams—but the speaker must search inwardly for direction. Faith here is not inherited effortlessly; it is walked into, step by step, often without certainty.

Rossetti’s emphasis on journey rather than arrival speaks to those whose spiritual paths have felt solitary or uncertain. The poem quietly affirms that longing itself—the desire to follow the light, even when unsure what form it will take—is an act of faith. The final question about gifts reframes worthiness: not what do I lack? but what do I already carry that is precious?

For queer Christians, that can be read as an invitation to offer one’s whole self—identity, love, honesty, perseverance—as a gift, even when tradition has suggested those things were unfit for the altar.

⸻

About the Poet

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) was one of the most important religious poets of the Victorian era. Raised in a deeply Anglican household, her poetry frequently explores themes of devotion, renunciation, longing, and divine love. While she lived a life marked by personal restraint and religious seriousness, her work often reveals profound emotional depth and spiritual tension.

Rossetti never married, declined at least two proposals due to religious differences, and devoted much of her life to faith and writing. Modern readers—particularly women and LGBTQ+ readers—have found in her poetry a quiet resistance to easy answers and rigid roles. Her work makes space for desire, doubt, and devotion to coexist, offering a spirituality rooted not in triumph, but in humility and searching.

The Christmas Wreath

By Anna de Brémont

Oh! Christmas wreath upon the wall,
Within thine ivied space
I see the years beyond recall,
Amid thy leaves I trace
The shadows of a happy past,
When all the world was bright,
And love its magic splendour cast
O’er morn and noon and night.

Oh! Christmas wreath upon the wall,
’Neath memory’s tender spell
A wondrous charm doth o’er thee fall,
And round thy beauty dwell.
Thine ivy hath the satiny sheen
Of tresses I’ve caressed,
Thy holly’s crimson gleam I’ve seen
On lips I oft have pressed.

Oh! Christmas wreath upon the wall,
A mist steals o’er my sight.
Dear hallow’d wreath, these tears are all
The pledge I now can plight
To those loved ones whose spirit eyes
Shine down the flight of time;
Around God’s throne their voices rise
To swell the Christmas Chime!

About the Poem

There is something quietly powerful about a Christmas wreath. We hang it almost without thinking—on a door, above a mantel, in a hallway we pass through every day. And yet, as Anna de Brémont reminds us, the wreath becomes far more than decoration. It becomes a frame for memory.

For many LGBTQ+ people, Christmas is a season layered with complexity. It holds beauty and warmth, but also silence—loves once hidden, names never spoken aloud, affections carefully guarded. Some of our most meaningful relationships lived in the margins of what was considered acceptable, even as they shaped us deeply and truthfully.

The wreath in this poem holds those memories without judgment. Its ivy and holly recall touch and intimacy—hair once caressed, lips once kissed—loves that were real, even if they could not always be visible. De Brémont does not apologize for this remembering. She sanctifies it.

As the poem moves toward its close, grief and hope meet. Those we loved, and sometimes lost too soon or too quietly, are not erased. Their presence is gathered into something eternal. Their voices, the poem tells us, now rise in the Christmas chime around God’s throne.

For those of us who have ever wondered whether our love was too much, too different, or too inconvenient to be holy, this poem offers a quiet reassurance: love remembered with tenderness is never wasted. It endures. It is held. It belongs.

This Christmas, may the wreaths we hang remind us not only of tradition, but of truth—that love, in all its forms, is worthy of remembrance, and that nothing genuine is ever outside the reach of grace.

In “The Christmas Wreath,” Anna de Brémont transforms a familiar holiday symbol into a vessel of remembrance. The evergreen wreath—traditionally a sign of eternal life—becomes a mirror through which the speaker revisits love, intimacy, and loss.

The ivy and holly are not merely decorative. They take on human qualities:

• ivy becomes the “satiny sheen / Of tresses I’ve caressed”
• holly recalls the “crimson gleam” of beloved lips

This is a deeply embodied poem. Memory is tactile. Love is remembered through touch, color, and physical closeness.

In the final stanza, the poem shifts heavenward. The wreath no longer holds only memory—it becomes a bridge between worlds. The speaker’s tears are not despairing, but devotional, offered as a sacred pledge to loved ones whose voices now join the “Christmas Chime” around God’s throne.

The poem does not deny grief; it sanctifies it.

About the Poet

Anna de Brémont (1859–1922) was an American poet, novelist, and playwright whose work often explored themes of love, longing, memory, and emotional interiority. Writing at the turn of the 20th century, she was part of a literary moment that valued lyricism and personal reflection—especially in poetry intended for quiet reading rather than public performance.

While not widely read today, de Brémont’s poetry resonates with modern readers for its emotional clarity and its willingness to hold tenderness and sorrow in the same breath. Her Christmas poetry, in particular, avoids sentimentality, instead offering a mature meditation on love that endures beyond time.

*          *          *

Perhaps that is why we hang wreaths year after year. Not just to celebrate the season—but to remember. To honor love that shaped us. To trust that nothing truly cherished is ever lost.May this season hold space for both your joy and your longing. Both belong.

Mistletoe
By Walter de la Mare

Sitting under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
One last candle burning low,
All the sleepy dancers gone,
Just one candle burning on,
Shadows lurking everywhere:
Some one came, and kissed me there.

Tired I was; my head would go
Nodding under the mistletoe
(Pale-green, fairy mistletoe),
No footsteps came, no voice, but only,
Just as I sat there, sleepy, lonely,
Stooped in the still and shadowy air
Lips unseen—and kissed me there.

I was thinking the other day about kissing—it came up in a discussion—and it made me wonder: when was the last time I was kissed passionately or romantically? Really kissed. And the truth is… I couldn’t remember. Men I’ve dated often don’t want to kiss, or there’s a “no kissing on the first date” rule. So yes, it’s been a while. And I miss it. I’ve always loved kissing. It was actually kissing the last girlfriend I ever dated that made me realize I no longer wanted to try dating women. The kiss wasn’t bad—it was fine—but I remember thinking that I’d rather be her, the one kissed, held, and cherished. That desire to be held and loved, to feel that deep sense of comfort and safety, was the first real shift in how I understood my sexuality.

Anyway, I’m already off topic. This morning was bitterly cold (it was –8° last night and still –1° when I got up), and as I searched for a poem that felt right for December—something that carried the hush of the season—I returned to Walter de la Mare’s “Mistletoe.” I’ve used this poem in the past, but it hits differently every time I read it.

About the Poem

“Mistletoe” is a winter whisper of longing, enchantment, and loneliness. De la Mare captures that in-between moment at the end of a party—when the music has stopped, the candles have burned low, and someone remains behind in the soft afterglow. It’s a scene suspended between waking and dreaming. Out of that stillness comes a kiss, quiet and unannounced, arriving like magic or memory or hope.

The kiss is tender, mysterious, and possibly imagined. That ambiguity is the poem’s heartbeat:

Is the kiss real, or is it the dream of someone wishing desperately to be kissed?

From a queer perspective, the poem resonates even more. Many LGBTQ+ people know what it means to sit on the margins of gatherings, to feel both present and unseen. Many of us have spent years longing for a kiss we didn’t yet have permission to want—or couldn’t openly ask for. The poem’s “lips unseen” carry the suggestion of a secret desire, a hidden affection, or the longing for intimacy that might not be safe to show in public.

The mistletoe itself—a plant associated with holiday traditions, romantic possibility, and the chance of a spontaneous kiss—becomes a symbol of queer yearning. It represents the hope that love might find us unexpectedly, even quietly, even when we feel most alone.

Reading it today, what struck me most was the tenderness of an unseen kiss offered to someone tired, lonely, half-asleep. It feels like a blessing of comfort. A reminder that desire doesn’t disappear simply because time has passed. A reminder that even in the coldest season, warmth can find us.

And maybe, for some of us, a reminder that we still long to be kissed—and that it’s okay to say so.

About the Poet

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) was an English poet, novelist, and writer of children’s literature, best known for his atmospheric, dreamlike style. His work often explores the boundary between the real and the uncanny, weaving together memory, imagination, and the subtle tensions of solitude. De la Mare’s poetry is marked by musical phrasing and delicate imagery, and he remains beloved for pieces like “The Listeners” and his numerous anthology favorites. Though he lived a largely private life, his work continues to resonate with anyone drawn to mystery, introspection, and the quiet emotional spaces we tend to visit in winter.

If Time Would Let Us
By Theresa Williams Hudson

I wish we could wake
each morning forever—
the soft light on your face,
your breath beside mine,
the world still quiet,
just us.

But time is a thief
with gentle hands,
unfolding the hours
like pages we didn’t mean to turn.

I watch you in moments—
your laugh,
the way your eyes still find mine
in a crowded room,
the way your hand finds mine
in the dark.

And I think—
what if this is all we get?

What if this love,
this life,
was always a flame meant to flicker
just long enough
to change everything it touched?

Time is slowing.
Time is ending.
And still, I’d choose you
in every hour we’re given.

Even in the leaving,
you’re worth the ache.
Even in the silence,
you echo.

If time would let us,
I’d never let you go.
But if it must,
then let me love you
so fiercely
you feel me
even in the quiet after.

About the Poem

This past Saturday, November 29, marked ten years since I lost a dear friend in a car accident. He and I met through this blog. What began as comments and emails grew into an everyday friendship—we texted constantly, starting each morning with a “good morning” and ending each night with “I love you.”

We never got the chance to meet in person, though we had planned to. My next academic conference was going to bring me to his city, and we were both excited to finally see each other face to face. Until then, our friendship lived in words—words that carried us through laughter, struggles, and the simple comfort of daily check-ins.

His life had been unbearably difficult. When he came out, his family disowned him. The boyfriend who had inspired him to come out abandoned him when he needed love most. He suffered night terrors almost every evening, haunted by the cruel voices planted in him by those who should have cared for him. And yet, he was one of the sweetest souls I’ve ever known. He loved browsing the greeting card aisle, picking out cards that reminded him of friends, and sending them just because. I still have many of those cards and treasure them. He even sent cards to his family, though they always came back unopened—sometimes with hateful notes scrawled across them.

But in the months before his death, things were finally turning around. He had a boyfriend who loved him deeply, a man who planned to propose to him on Christmas morning. He had a good job, was preparing to move back near his partner, and was about to begin graduate school. For the first time in a long time, his life was on the verge of stability, love, and happiness. And then, tragedy took him away.

Though he was in my life for only a short time, his influence was profound. He gave me strength and courage when I needed it most. Once, when I was nervous about meeting someone I’d connected with online, he encouraged me to take the chance. I did, and that leap became a lasting relationship with a man who was not only a boyfriend, but also a fellow scholar and Episcopal priest, someone I could talk to about both history and faith. That never would have happened without my friend urging me to step out of my comfort zone.

After his death, I couldn’t even say his name without bursting into tears. For years, grief made his memory almost too heavy to bear. Yet time, though it took him from me, also left behind echoes—his laughter, his words of encouragement, his insistence that life is meant to be embraced. Today, I keep a framed picture of him in my living room. When I hesitate at the edge of change, I look at that picture, and I can almost hear him telling me again: take the chance.

Theresa Williams Hudson’s poem captures the ache of this anniversary perfectly. “But time is a thief with gentle hands, unfolding the hours like pages we didn’t mean to turn.” That’s how it felt—like the story of his life was moving toward hope, only to have the pages snatched away before he could finish the chapter. Her words—“what if this love, this life, was always a flame meant to flicker just long enough to change everything it touched?”—remind me that though his flame was short, it changed me forever.

Hudson ends with: “Even in the leaving, you’re worth the ache. Even in the silence, you echo.” That is exactly how I remember my friend. Even ten years later, he is worth every ache of grief. And even in the silence of his absence, he still echoes in my life—in kindness, in courage, and in love. He is the one who encouraged me to take the risk of applying for the job in Vermont, the one decision that reshaped my life and brought me here. Every time I step into a new chapter, I carry his voice with me. If time would have let us, I would never have let him go. Since it didn’t, I live more fully because of him.

About the Poet

Theresa Williams Hudson is a contemporary poet whose work often explores love, loss, and the passing of time. Writing in free verse, she draws on intimate moments and everyday images to capture emotions that feel both deeply personal and universally resonant. Her poetry has circulated widely online, where its honesty and tenderness have found a devoted readership. “If Time Would Let Us” exemplifies her ability to distill profound truths into lyrical simplicity, reminding us that even the most fleeting connections can echo long after time has moved on.

Thanksgiving
By James Whitcomb Riley

Let us be thankful—not only because
   Since last our universal thanks were told
We have grown greater in the world’s applause,
   And fortune’s newer smiles surpass the old—
But thankful for all things that come as alms
   From out the open hand of Providence:—
The winter clouds and storms—the summer calms—
   The sleepless dread—the drowse of indolence.
Let us be thankful—thankful for the prayers
   Whose gracious answers were long, long delayed,
That they might fall upon us unawares,
   And bless us, as in greater need we prayed.
Let us be thankful for the loyal hand
   That love held out in welcome to our own,
When love and only love could understand
   The need of touches we had never known.
Let us be thankful for the longing eyes
   That gave their secret to us as they wept,
Yet in return found, with a sweet surprise,
   Love’s touch upon their lids, and, smiling, slept.
And let us, too, be thankful that the tears
   Of sorrow have not all been drained away,
That through them still, for all the coming years,
   We may look on the dead face of To-day.

About the Poem

As we move into Thanksgiving week—a short one for many of us, and hopefully a peaceful one—it feels right to slow down, take a breath, and sit with a poem that understands the holiday not as perfection, but as presence. James Whitcomb Riley’s “Thanksgiving” is simple on its surface, yet gently profound in its reminder that gratitude often lives quietly in the ordinary spaces of our lives.

Riley is sometimes called the “Hoosier Poet,” known for his nostalgic portrayals of Midwestern life. But “Thanksgiving” reaches far beyond its setting. The poem invites us to be grateful not just for success or blessings that shine, but also for the quieter graces—calm days, sufficient bread, moments of peace in a noisy world.

It’s a gentle reminder that gratitude doesn’t only come wrapped in celebration. Sometimes it comes in small mercies: time off before a holiday, a quiet office, or even the chance to sit with memories of those we’ve loved and lost. For many LGBTQ+ people, Thanksgiving can be complicated, but Riley’s poem offers a form of gratitude that doesn’t require perfection—just awareness.

This week, many of us juggle traditions, emotions, travel, absence, and the bittersweet ache of remembering those who won’t sit at the table with us anymore. Gratitude can be tender, even painful. And yet, as Riley writes, we “are richer than we know,” not because everything is easy, but because blessings—large and small—still find their way into our days.

For LGBTQ+ folks especially, finding spaces where we can breathe, belong, or simply rest is a blessing worth naming.

As we enter this holiday week, may we find gratitude in whatever form it takes—joyful, quiet, complicated, or tender. May we honor the memories that still ache, the friends who steady us, the moments of peace that carry us through. And may we remember that grace often hides in the ordinary.

Wishing everyone a gentle and meaningful Thanksgiving week.

About the Poet

James Whitcomb Riley (1849–1916) was one of America’s most beloved popular poets. Sometimes sentimental, often nostalgic, he captured a vision of everyday American life rooted in kindness, simplicity, and warmth. His work was widely read in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often recited at gatherings and printed in holiday editions of newspapers and magazines. “Thanksgiving” reflects the accessible, heartfelt tone for which he was known.

Spring Rush

By Aaron Smith

The college boys have pulled their shirts
off and are playing football
on the lawn. Their farmer tans pink
in the afternoon sun. They toss

and jog, slight fake and almost
tackle. One puts his face too close
to another one’s stomach, grabs
the guy’s waist—steady—to keep

from falling; then a damp armpit on the back
of his neck, as a blond wraps his arm
around him in a quick guy-hug. I am old-
er and pretend not to see, furtive

in sunglasses, looking at them, past
them, at them. I could ruin the game
by watching the wrong way—professor gawking
at students; even a shift between them

could change everything: a hand more than
smacking an ass, someone pressed too long
against a humid chest. Crash of skin,
body pushing body into perfect crush.

Their biceps bulge, un-bulge, bulge again.
It’s not that I want them. I’ve had enough
men, and yet I can’t stop looking at them
while trying not to look at them.

About the Poem

Aaron Smith has a way of holding up a moment—one we might otherwise dismiss as simple, ordinary, harmless—and revealing all the longing, all the humor, all the complicated ache underneath. His poem “Spring Rush” captures a scene many of us know all too well: young men tumbling across a sunlit lawn, roughhousing with the kind of careless intimacy that adulthood slowly chisels away.

The poem opens with a tableau of shirtless college boys playing football, their “farmer tans pink in the afternoon sun,” their bodies moving with effortless confidence. It’s a familiar choreography to anyone who has watched young men at play—how easily they invade each other’s space, how unselfconscious their closeness is, how they grab, steady, press, and laugh without a second thought. Smith catches each gesture with almost photographic clarity:

one puts his face too close
to another one’s stomach…
a blond wraps his arm
around him in a quick guy-hug.

What he’s really capturing, though, is the speaker watching. Not intrusively, not predatory, but with a mix of wistfulness and restraint—half nostalgia, half desire, and a healthy dose of gay self-awareness. “I am older and pretend not to see,” he admits, slipping on the protection of sunglasses, watching but trying not to watch. Smith renders the tension of that gaze with startling honesty. He knows how easily a moment like this can break, how a look held too long can change the boys’ play, turning innocent roughhousing into something self-conscious, something policed.

It’s the familiar queer balancing act: seeing without being seen seeing.

One of the most poignant lines comes near the end:

It’s not that I want them. I’ve had enough
men, and yet I can’t stop looking at them
while trying not to look at them.

It’s a line that resonates with age, experience, and the complicated beauty of queer desire. Wanting isn’t always erotic; sometimes it’s longing for a kind of ease, a kind of freedom, a kind of uncomplicated belonging that many of us never got to fully inhabit in our younger years. The poem complicates the gaze—it’s not a hunger for the boys, but a hunger for the days when closeness wasn’t dangerous.

Spring Rush is tender, observant, and unflinchingly honest. It holds space for that bittersweet place where desire, memory, and self-restraint overlap—where we both relish and mourn the distance between who we were and who we have become.

About the Poet

Aaron Smith is an award-winning American poet known for his candid, queer-centered writing that blends desire, humor, vulnerability, and sharp cultural observation. A graduate of the MFA program at the University of Pittsburgh, he is the author of several acclaimed collections, including Blue on Blue Ground, Appetite, and Primer. Smith’s work often explores gay identity, aging, pop culture, and the messy intersections of intimacy and longing. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Yale Review, Court Green, and Best American Poetry.