From my mother, a rock, / I have learned that rocks give / most of all.

Gay culture is far from 'marginal,' being rather 'intersectional,' the conduits between unlike beings.

He called her: mother of pearl, barley woman, rice provider, millet basket, corn maid, flax princess, all-maker, weef She called him: fawn, roebuck, stag, courage, thunderman, all-in-green, mountain strider, keeper of forests, my-love-rides

We lavender folk spray up, spontaneously flowering in the color we had learned as an identifying mark of our culture when it was subterranean and secret.

From my mother, a rock, / I have learned that rocks give / most of all.

We cannot live in the past, nor can we re-create it. Yet as we unravel the past, the future also unfolds before us, as though they are mirrors without which neither can be seen or happen.

Those who believe they are ugly / objectify the rest of us.