what to call you who i’ve slept beside through so many apocalypses
the kind that occur nightly in this late stage of the collapsing west
boyfriend was fine even though we are neither boys nor men but love
how it makes us sudden infants in the eyes of any listener—how
it brings us back to some childhood we never got to live. that was,
at the time, unlivable. my sweetheart. my excised sheep’s-heart.
my fled garden. my metal garter. after yet another man calls his wife
his partner at the dog park it’s clearly time to find another name for you—
he says it’smy partner’s birthday we’re going to buca di beppo then key largo—
and wild how quick a name becomes yet another vehicle
through which to reproduce violence. partner fit like a skin and then
that skin tightened and tore off—you who are neither my chain
italian restaurant nor my all-inclusive vacation spot. not my owner
or my only or my own. not my down payment or my dowery
of sheep and crop. not lost. not loss. apophasis is a way of naming
what is by what is not—but what is? my boutonniere. my goofy queer.
my salt. my silk. my silt. my slit. my top and my basement. my vanquished
prostate. my battered apostate. my memory. my memory. my meteor.
all these names for what exactly? to introduce what is to those
who don’t know. this is my whole. this is my hole. take part of me.
About This Poem
Some of you may not be too fond of this poem because it’s modern poetry, but occasionally, I think modern poetry can really make us think. Then, sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense at all, even after the poet discusses what it means. “My Hole. My Whole.” is one of those poems that is easy to understand, is quite interesting, and makes you think.
pSam Sax wrote about what inspired this poem. He said, “This poem began, as many do, struggling with the limitations of language. Being in a long-term, queer, poly, nonbinary relationship, we often find ourselves pushing against the terminology we inherited for how to name ourselves and our love(s), how to become legible to ourselves and to others. Both queerness and poetry can offer ways of breaking with the past and searching for strange syntax and improper nouns, not just to define an already lived experience but to eke out a space to imagine new possible futures. This poem struggles with this question of naming, of possibility, of fluidity. It offers up one way of honoring the flexibility and specificity of our loves.”
About the Poet
Sam Sax is a queer Jewish writer and educator. They are the author of Pig (Scribner, 2023); Bury It (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), which received the 2017 James Laughlin Award; and Madness (Penguin Books, 2017), winner of the National Poetry Series. They are also the author of the novel, Yr Dead (McSweeney’s, 2024).
Of Sax’s work, James Laughlin Award judge Tyehimba Jess writes,
Bury It, Sam Sax’s urgent, thriving excavation of desire, is lit with imagery and purpose that surprises and jolts at every turn. Exuberant, wild, tightly knotted mesmerisms of discovery inhabit each poem in this seethe of hunger and sacred toll of toil. A vitalizing and necessary book of poems that dig hard and lift luminously.
Sax has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, Lambda Literary, MacDowell, Stanford University, and Yaddo. They are also the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion.
Sax has served as the poetry editor at BOAAT Press, and they are currently serving as a lecturer in the ITALIC program at Stanford University.
When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least, must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in its breast, One bird begins to close a faded eye; Or overtaken too far from its nest, Hurrying low above the grove, some waif Swoops just in time to his remembered tree. At most he thinks or twitters softly, “Safe! Now let the night be dark for all of me. Let the night be too dark for me to see Into the future. Let what will be be.”
About this Poem
“Acceptance” appears in Robert Frost’s poetry collection, West-Running Brook (Henry Holt and Company, 1928). In his article, “The Use of Irony in Robert Frost,” author, professor of English, and director of graduate studies at the University of South Carolina, Donald J. Greiner wrote: “The sonnet ‘Acceptance’ deals entirely with this balance of trust and mistrust, but its tone seems much darker than that of the other poems of ironic acceptance. […] The bird twitters ‘safe,’ but Frost shows that he does not consider this any great victory when he qualifies ‘safe’ with ‘at most.’ This bird strikes no boastful pose, utters no bragging words; ‘at most’ it notes to itself that it is safe. But the irony comes from the rest of its statement. […] As in so many of Frost’s poems, the fear stems from the recognition that some unknown force is at work in the universe. The title ‘Acceptance’ is almost bitterly ironic, for the bird accepts only because it can do nothing else. Its safety is a night-by-night struggle, and its only defense against overwhelming fear is acceptance of its predicament.”
About the Poet
One of the most celebrated figures in American poetry, Robert Frost was the author of numerous poetry collections, including New Hampshire (Henry Holt and Company, 1923). Born in San Francisco in 1874, he lived and taught for many years in Massachusetts and Vermont. He died in Boston in 1963.
And was it I that hoped to rattle A broken lance against iron laws? Was it I that asked to go down in battle For a lost cause? Fool! Must there be new deaths to cry for When only rottenness survives? Here are enough lost causes to die for Through twenty lives. What have we learned? That the familiar Lusts are the only things that endure; That for an age grown blinder and sillier, There is no cure. And man? Free of one kind of fetter, He runs to gaudier shackles and brands; Deserving, for all his groans, no better Than he demands. The flat routine of bed and barter, Birth and burial, holds the lot… Was it I that dreamed of being a martyr? How—and for what? Yet, while this unconcern runs stronger As life shrugs on without meaning or shape, Let me know flame and the teeth of hunger; Storm—not escape.
About the Poem
In the poem “He Goads Himself” by Louis Untermeyer the speaker explores feelings of disappointment and the struggle against the rooted systems and beliefs. The complexity of the poem emerges from exploring how the speaker’s understanding of themselves and the world evolves over time of about the general beliefs about life.
About the Poet
Louis Untermeyer, born October 1, 1885, in New York City, was a poet, essayist, critic, and anthologist. The author and editor of many collections, including the popular anthology of children’s verse, The Golden Treasury of Poetry (Golden Press, 1959), he served as the fourteenth consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress, known today as the United States poet laureate. He died on December 18, 1977.
Think of the records you have held: For one second, you were the world’s youngest person.
It was a long time ago, but still. At this moment, you are living
In the farthest thousandth-of-a-second in the history of time. You have beaten yesterday’s record, again.
You were perhaps the only participant, But in the race to get from your bedroom to the bathroom,
You won. You win so much, all the time in all things.
Your heart simply beats and beats and beats— It does not lose, although perhaps one day.
Nevertheless, the lists of firsts for you is endless— Doing what you have not done before,
Tasting sake and mole, smelling bergamot, hearing Less well than you used to—
Not all records are for the scrapbook, of course— Sometimes you are the best at being the worst.
Some records are secret—you know which ones. Some records you’re not even aware of.
In general, however, at the end of a long day, you are— Unlikely as it may seem—the record holder of note.
About the Poem
I enjoy the theme of this poem because it says we are all winners, and we should celebrate our own little victories. In a historical note, just like the 100 meters, was an official Olympic competition from 1912 to 1948. Sadly, the names of the medal winners are not listed on the International Olympic Committee’s rosters. Art competitions were part of the Olympic program from 1912 to 1948, but were discontinued due to concerns about amateurism and professionalism. Medals were awarded in five categories (architecture, literature, music, painting, and sculpture), for works inspired by sport-related themes.
About the Poet
Born in 1952, Alberto Ríos is the inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona and the author of many poetry collections, including A Small Story about the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 2015). In 1981, he received the Walt Whitman Award for his collection Whispering to Fool the Wind (Sheep Meadow Press, 1982). He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2014 to 2020.
I used to think my body craved annihilation. An inevitability, like the slow asphyxiation of the earth. Yoked to this body by beauty, its shallow promises I was desperate to believe, too fearful to renounce my allegiance even with its hand closing around my throat. When I chose myself, I chose surrender. God is the river that remakes me in its image. I didn’t know what was waiting on the other side. I swam through it anyway.
About This Poem
“I contemplated transitioning for many years before I took the leap, but I let fear—of violence and rejection, of how I would be perceived, of my own masculinity and masculinity in general—hold me back. This poem is a celebration of the divine and liberating act of choosing one’s happiness despite that fear.” —Ally Ang
Ally Ang is a gaysian poet and editor based in Seattle. They are the author of Let the Moon Wobble, forthcoming from Alice James Books in Fall 2025.
Ang’s work has been published in Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology (Autumn House Press 2022), Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color (Nightboat Books 2018), The Margins, The Journal, and elsewhere. They are a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, a 2023 MacDowell fellow, a 2022 Jack Straw Writers Program Fellow and a 2022 Tin House Summer Workshop participant.
Ang is an editor with Game Over Books, the author of the chapbook Monstrosity (Damaged Goods Press 2016), and the co-editor of an anthology of Southeast Asian art and writing titled All the Oils: On Friendship, Sex, and Other Warmths (Ginger Bug Press 2021).
The mirror is dirty from the detritus of dailiness— I look in the mirror and am freckled.
A week out from being cleaned, maybe two, maybe more, The Milky Way shows itself in the secret silver,
This star chart in my own bathroom, Aglow not in darkness but with the lights on,
Everything suddenly so clear. It is not smear I am looking at, but galaxies.
It is not toothpaste and water spots— When I look in the mirror, it is writing and numbers,
Musical notes, 1s and 0s, Morse-like codes, runes. I am looking over into the other side,
And over there, whoever they are, it turns out They look a lot like me. Like me, but freckled.
About this Poem
“Whatever our professional posturing, this poem speaks to the everyday lives we also lead—not cleaning the bathroom sink quite as much as we perhaps should, not always controlling the floss strings of good intentions now turned wild, not vacuuming nearly enough. But even in the mundane, we have, always at hand, surprise, surprise at its most savory in that we have least expected to find it where it is not advertised.” —Alberto Ríos
About the Poet
Born in 1952, Alberto Ríos is the inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona and the author of many poetry collections, including A Small Story about the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 2015). In 1981, he received the Walt Whitman Award for his collection Whispering to Fool the Wind (Sheep Meadow Press, 1982). He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2014 to 2020.
Since Persia fell at Marathon, The yellow years have gathered fast: Long centuries have come and gone.
And yet (they say) the place will don A phantom fury of the past, Since Persia fell at Marathon;
And as of old, when Helicon Trembled and swayed with rapture vast (Long centuries have come and gone),
This ancient plain, when night comes on, Shakes to a ghostly battle-blast, Since Persia fell at Marathon.
But into soundless Acheron The glory of Greek shame was cast: Long centuries have come and gone,
The suns of Hellas have all shone, The first has fallen to the last:— Since Persia fell at Marathon, Long centuries have come and gone.
About the Poem
The poem begins with a reference to the Battle of Marathon, which took place in 490 BC. Edwin Arlington Robinson uses this historical event to establish a timeline for the poem and to show how the passage of time has changed the world. Robinson describes how the glory of Greece has faded over time, and how the suns of Hellas have all set.
The poem is, as the title suggests, a villanelle, which is one of my favorite poetic forms. I love highly structured poetic forms such as sonnets and villanelles. Villanelles are a French verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas and a final quatrain, with the first and third lines of the first stanza repeating alternately in the following stanzas. These two refrain lines form the final couplet in the quatrain. The form’s repetition of lines suggests that the villanelle is often used, and properly used, to deal with one or another degree of obsession. Robinson often wrote his poems as villanelles.
The final line of “Villanelle of Change,” Long centuries have come and gone, is a reminder of the fleeting nature of time. The poem as a whole is a meditation on the power of time to change and destroy. It’s a complex and challenging poem, but it is also beautiful. The poem’s use of language is precise and evocative, and its structure is carefully crafted. Like many of Robinson’s poems, “Villanelle of Change” is a poem that will stay with you long after you have finished reading it. “The House on the Hill” is a haunting poem about an abandoned house. “Richard Cory” tells of a man who seemingly had everything but companionship, and I’ve never forgotten the shocking final quatrain. “Miniver Cheevy” describes a man who dreamed of living in long ago times and would have likely loved “Villanelle of Change” as it harkens back to a different time.
In comparison to Robinson’s other works, “Villanelle of Change” is a more subdued and reflective poem. It lacks the dramatic intensity of some of his other works, such as the three listed above, but it more than makes up for it with its subtle beauty and wisdom. “Villanelle of Change” is a poem that is well worth your time and attention.
About the Poet
On December 22, 1869, Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in Head Tide, Maine (the same year as W. B. Yeats ). His family moved to Gardiner, Maine, in 1870, which was renamed “Tilbury Town,” and became the backdrop for many of Robinson’s poems. Robinson described his childhood as stark and unhappy; he once wrote in a letter to Amy Lowell that he remembered wondering why he had been born at the age of six. After high school, Robinson spent two years studying at Harvard University as a special student, and his first poems were published in the Harvard Advocate.
Robinson privately printed and released his first volume of poetry, The Torrent and the Night Before, in 1896 at his own expense; this collection was extensively revised and published in 1897 as The Children of the Night. Unable to make a living by writing, he got a job as an inspector for the New York City subway system. In 1902, he published Captain Craig and Other Poems. This work received little attention until President Theodore Roosevelt wrote a magazine article praising it and Robinson. Roosevelt also offered Robinson a sinecure in a U.S. Customs House, a job he held from 1905 to 1910. Robinson dedicated his next work, The Town Down the River (1910), to Roosevelt.
Robinson’s first major success was The Man Against the Sky (1916). He also composed a trilogy based on Arthurian legends: Merlin (1917), Lancelot (1920), and Tristram (1927), which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1928. Robinson was also awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems (1921) in 1922 and The Man Who Died Twice (1924) in 1925. For the last twenty-five years of his life, Robinson spent his summers at the MacDowell Colony of artists and musicians in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Robinson never married and led a notoriously solitary lifestyle. He died in New York City on April 6, 1935.
He was a boy when first we met; His eyes were mixed of dew and fire, And on his candid brow was set The sweetness of a chaste desire: But in his veins the pulses beat Of passion, waiting for its wing, As ardent veins of summer heat Throb through the innocence of spring.
As manhood came, his stature grew, And fiercer burned his restless eyes, Until I trembled, as he drew From wedded hearts their young disguise. Like wind-fed flame his ardor rose, And brought, like flame, a stormy rain: In tumult, sweeter than repose, He tossed the souls of joy and pain.
So many years of absence change! I knew him not when he returned: His step was slow, his brow was strange, His quiet eye no longer burned. When at my heart I heard his knock, No voice within his right confessed: I could not venture to unlock Its chambers to an alien guest.
Then, at the threshold, spent and worn With fruitless travel, down he lay: And I beheld the gleams of morn On his reviving beauty play. I knelt, and kissed his holy lips, I washed his feet with pious care; And from my life the long eclipse Drew off; and left his sunshine there.
He burns no more with youthful fire; He melts no more in foolish tears; Serene and sweet, his eyes inspire The steady faith of balanced years. His folded wings no longer thrill, But in some peaceful flight of prayer: He nestles in my heart so still, I scarcely feel his presence there.
O Love, that stern probation o’er, Thy calmer blessing is secure! Thy beauteous feet shall stray no more, Thy peace and patience shall endure! The lightest wind deflowers the rose, The rainbow with the sun departs, But thou art centred in repose, And rooted in my heart of hearts!
Bayard Taylor (1825-1878) was an American poet, novelist, travel writer, literary critic, diplomat, lecturer, and translator. He was a frustrated poet who, even though he published twenty volumes of poetry, resented the mass appeal of his travel writings, because his desire was to be known as a poet. Even his travel writings have been relegated to the dustbin of literary history, and he is known today solely for his translation of both volumes of Goethe’s Faust.
Bayard was born on the January 11, 1825, in the small town of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania into a Quaker family. His parents were reasonably well-off farmers and could afford to give their son a decent education at academies in West Chester and Unionville. Although he entered the printing business as an apprentice, he was a keen writer of poetry and took great inspiration from the influential Rufus Wilmot Griswold. Encouraged by Griswold he published his first volume of poems at the age of 19 and called it Ximena, or the Battle of the Sierra Morena and other Poems. It sold badly but was noticed by the editor of the New York Tribune.
He worked as a journalist on the New York Tribune and other publications and this profession turned out to be his gateway to extensive worldwide travel when sent on assignments abroad. He even turned his hand to lyric writing for famous singers and completed a period of diplomatic service in St Petersburg, Russia.
He was lucky that his first commission was a European trip covering Germany, Italy, France, and England. He spent two years happily travelling at a slow pace, sending reports back to the Tribune. He was also engaged by other publications such as The Saturday Evening Post and The United States Gazette. On his return to the States, he was encouraged to publish his first travel book, based on his recent adventures. Views Afoot, or Europe seen with Knapsack and Staff was published in New York in two separate volumes in 1846. Further assignments followed but this time within the United States and Mexico. Taylor was now comfortably established in both journalism and as an author. He also had some success with a set of lyrics written for a visiting Swedish singer called Jenny Lind which were sung at concerts around the country. Within a few years he was off again on his travels, this time to Egypt and other countries in the Middle East.
In 1853, Taylor started from England and sailed to India, China, and then Japan. He was back in the States at the end of 1853 and then began a successful lecture tour. Two more years passed before the next overseas trip and this time he chose the countries of Northern Europe such as Sweden. Here he was inspired to write a long poem in narrative form called Lars.
Incredibly he found the time to serve as a diplomat and was appointed chargé d’affaires at the United States embassy in St Petersburg in 1863, accompanied by his second wife Maria. The following year they were back home at Kennett Square and Taylor wrote four novels with limited success. Poetry was his forte.
Taylor confided to Walt Whitman that he found in his own nature “a physical attraction and tender and noble love of man for man.” Taylor’s novel Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania (1870), which depicted men holding hands and kissing, is considered the first American gay novel by modern scholars. It presented a special attachment between two men and discussed the nature and significance of such a relationship, romantic but not sexual. Critics are divided in interpreting Taylor’s novel as a political argument for gay relationships or an idealization of male spirituality. This novel is said to be based on the romantic relationship between poets Fitz-Greene Halleck and Joseph Rodman Drake. In Keith Stern’s Queers in History, it is revealed that the love of Taylor’s life was George Henry Boker, although both men married women. The American banker, diplomat, and poet George Boker wrote to Taylor in 1856 that he had “never loved anything human as I love you. It is a joy and a pride to my heart to know that this feeling is returned.”
His travelling days were not finished, and he was appointed to another diplomatic post, this time in Berlin. Unfortunately, he died only a few months after arriving in the German capital. Bayard Taylor died in Berlin on the December 19, 1878, at aged 53.
This salt-stain spot marks the place where men lay down their heads, back to the bench,
and hoist nothing that need be lifted but some burden they’ve chosen this time: more reps,
more weight, the upward shove of it leaving, collectively, this sign of where we’ve been: shroud-stain, negative
flashed onto the vinyl where we push something unyielding skyward, gaining some power
at least over flesh, which goads with desire, and terrifies with frailty. Who could say who’s
added his heat to the nimbus of our intent, here where we make ourselves: something difficult
lifted, pressed or curled, Power over beauty, power over power! Though there’s something more
tender, beneath our vanity, our will to become objects of desire: we sweat the mark of our presence onto the cloth.
Here is some halo the living made together.
About the Poet
Mark Doty was born in Maryville, Tennessee, on August 10, 1953. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently Deep Lane (W. W. Norton, 2015); A Swarm, A Flock, A Host: A Compendium of Creatures(Prestel, 2013); Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems (HarperCollins, 2008), which received the National Book Award; School of the Arts(HarperCollins, 2005); Source(HarperCollins, 2002); and Sweet Machine (HarperCollins, 1998). Other collections include Atlantis(HarperCollins, 1995), which received the Ambassador Book Award, the Bingham Poetry Prize, and a Lambda Literary Award; My Alexandria (University of Illinois Press, 1993), chosen by Philip Levine for the National Poetry Series, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and Britain’s T. S. Eliot Prize, and a National Book Award finalist; Bethlehem in Broad Daylight (D.R. Godine, 1991); and Turtle, Swan (D.R. Godine, 1987).
In 2010, Graywolf Press published Doty’s collection of essays on poetry titled The Art of Description: World into Word, in which Doty asserts that “poetry concretizes the singular, unrepeatable moment; it hammers out of speech a form for how it feels to be oneself.”
Doty is also a noted memoirist. In 2020, he published What Is the Grass: Walt Whitman in My Life (W. W. Norton), in which he traces his own experiences alongside those of Whitman, in the context of the elder poet’s creation of his best-known work, Leaves of Grass. In 1996, Doty released Heaven’s Coast (HarperCollins), which received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. His other memoirs are Dog Years (HarperCollins, 2007); Still Life with Oysters and Lemon: On Objects and Intimacy (Beacon Press, 2000); and Firebird (HarperCollins, 1999). He has also edited The Best American Poetry 2012.
Doty has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Whiting Foundation. He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2011 to 2016.
Doty has taught at the University of Houston and is currently serving as a distinguished writer at Rutgers University. He lives in New York City.
How Would That Feel Performed by Christina Chong Songwriters: Kay Hanley and Tom Polce
Did I hear that right? Did she just shine a spotlight On her innermost feelings Like it’s no big deal Say whatever, whenever you like
You’d presume with all my mastery To pursue flights of fancy, easy Who am I kidding, I’ve never found that part of me ‘Cause I’m designed to color inside the lines
Cool and methodical Way too responsible I can’t help it Sometimes I peek through a keyhole and see people happy I admit
It might be time to change my paradigm If only I can let go of the wheel My fear replaced with total faith I’m fiercely free and really real
Flying blind How would that feel?
This all makes me so uncomfortable I want to let go Be vulnerable Who am I kidding, I’ve never met that side of me In my defense The truth has a consequence
I won’t watch the whole thing spin out of control If I have the chance
It might be time to change my paradigm If I can only let go of the wheel My fear replaced with total faith I’m fiercely free and really real
Flying blind How would that feel?
In another time we had a life together Could time repeat Or will it unravel? Be careful what you start Make one mistake and blow it all apart Or worse Break my own heart Who am I kidding, I’ve never found that part of me
It might be time to change my paradigm If only I can let go of the wheel
It’s nice to dream that I could change my mind Deep down, I know I will never let go My fear is staked I have no faith Contented freedom is not real
Flying blind How would that feel?
Because June is Pride Month, I have been focusing on LGBTQ+ poems and poets. “How Would That Feel” from the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Subspace Rhapsody” might seem like an odd choice, but for me, the lyrics of this song (and I always think of songs as poems set to music) really resonated with me about my own experience as a gay man. But first, a little about the song. In this episode, Captain Christopher Pike and the crew of the USS Enterprise encounter a naturally occurring fold in subspace which, when interacted with, causes the entire crew to start singing their private thoughts and feelings. The episode is a musical, the first in the history of the Star Trek franchise. It’s one of my favorite Star Trek episodes.
“How Would That Feel” is the third song in the show after “Status Report,” which introduces us to the musical theme of the episode, and “Connect to Your Truth,” in which Una Chin-Riley, commonly and originally only known as Number One and Pike’s first officer, and James T. Kirk, the future captain of the Starship Enterprise, engage in a duet in which she advises him on how to serve in a command role. When La’an Noonien-Singh sees the interaction between Una and Kirk, La’an begins feeling emotional towards Kirk with whom she had a relationship in an alternate timeline. She goes to her quarters and sings about becoming a different person who takes chances.
Growing up gay in Alabama, whether I fully realized that’s what made me different at the time or not, made me hesitant to ever “say whatever, whenever” I like. When you’re closeted, you have to choose your words and mannerisms carefully to hide your true self, because as the song says, “In my defense / The truth has a consequence.” For La’an, it’s her heritage of being a descendant of one of Earth’s most villainous dictators and whether or not that means the same evil lives within her. For me, it was whether or not anyone would accept me, or would I lose everything if I came out?
I was considered very intelligent as a kid, some people still think I am, so when La’an sang, “You’d presume with all my mastery / To pursue flights of fancy, easy / Who am I kidding, I’ve never found that part of me / ‘Cause I’m designed to color inside the lines,” it felt like she was singing about my own story. I always felt that I could not be the real me. I didn’t even know who the real me was, so I did not pursue my “flights of fancy” about being attracted to other guys. I never let myself find that part of me; it was too hidden away because of the shame I was made to feel. So, I kept to what was expected of me and colored “inside the lines.” I studied hard because I wasn’t able to show my “masculinity” by playing sports. I was not athletic, so I had to fall back on my brains. I was a very serious kid. I was “Cool and methodical / Way too responsible.” I remember looking at other people who really enjoyed having romantic partners and I felt like I was peeking “through a keyhole and see people happy” when I was not. If I was free to be me, “How would that feel?”
I eventually came to understand that I could be happy if I changed “my paradigm / If only I can let go of the wheel / My fear replaced with total faith / I’m fiercely free and really real,” but I never felt like that was my reality. I could not be free, nor could I be real, my true self. I couldn’t watch my life “spin out of control” because I did not “have the chance” at that happiness. Once I came out to myself, I could come out to others, but as the song says, “This all makes me so uncomfortable.” I wanted to let go, be vulnerable, be myself, but was I? I had never “met that side of me” because I’d never allowed myself to be “fiercely free and really real.” I felt like if I ever allowed myself to meet that side of me, then my whole life might “spin out of control.”
The only part of the song that I didn’t fully identify with is:
In another time we had a life together Could time repeat Or will it unravel? Be careful what you start Make one mistake and blow it all apart Or worse Break my own heart Who am I kidding, I’ve never found that part of me
I have to admit though, I have always wondered about the possibility of reincarnation. Catholics believe in purgatory (the condition, process, or place of purification or temporary punishment in which, according to medieval Christian and Roman Catholic belief, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for heaven.) What if purgatory was actually previous lives we live. Religions, even some sects of Christianity, and especially the Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, have reincarnation as the central tenet of their faith. When the soul is passed from one being to the next until reaches cumulative virtues allows it to finally ascend into paradise. I could definitely get very metaphysical about this verse of the song, but this verse is more about La’an’s emotions towards Kirk who she has had a relationship in an alternate timeline. La’an knows that if she tells Kirk about her feelings, it could change the course of history, so she knows she cannot be herself and let her emotions out.
Ultimately, by the end of the song, La’an decides that she can’t allow herself to be who she is and take the steps to make try to make a better life for herself. She feels that she must keep everything bottled up inside.For many gay men out there, the dream of coming out never feels like it can become reality. This was the case for me for a long time. In some ways, I still hold myself back and think, “It’s nice to dream that I could change my mind” and let go a little more in an effort to make myself happy. I’m still resisting letting go completely because “Deep down, I know / I will never let go / My fear is staked,” and in some ways, I know that “Contented freedom is not real.” I will continue to work on who I want to be and try to be more comfortable with who I am. I have come a long way in fully accepting myself, even if I sometimes feel that I held myself back too long and now it’s too late to ever find that person who is meant for me to spend my life with. I still wonder “How would that feel?” to finally let go, allow myself to fly blind and not try to control everything. Could I “let go of the wheel” and create a better life for myself by letting go of my past and just be “really real.”
You might find my thoughts on this song silly, but I think we all have a song that speaks to our soul. It may not have meant to tell our personal story, but when we really look at the words and put it in a different context, then it fits. To me, that’s the makings of a truly great song. It’s a song that may have been made to be seen in a particular context, but it speaks to you in a way that the writer never considered. Poetry is oftentimes the same way. It’s up to our own interpretation. For me, that song is “How Would That Feel” because it feels like my personal story. I can’t help but belt it out when I listen to it, and I am sure all of you are very glad you have never had to hear me sing this song to the top of my lungs as I am driving down the road.
Joe
The Closet Professor 