Dear reader welcome to the Spring/Summer 2023 issue of WGW. We are delighted to feature the work of several writers and visual artists many of whom we are publishing for the first time and some whom we have featured before. Writers include Edward M Cohen, (USA), Flower Conroy, (USA), Ezekiel Eastbrook, (Australia), Laurie Greene, (USA), Jacklyn Henry, (USA), Jerilyn Alderman -Hansson, (Saskatchewan, Canada, Territory 6), Phillip Kobylarz, (USA), Giovanni Vitacolonna, (USA), and Charlotte Wührer. Visual artists are Timothy Evans, (USA), Steve Ferris, (UK) Paul Lorenz, (USA), Claudio Parentela, (Italy), John Paul, (USA), Daniel Torrent, (Spain) Charlotte Wührer, (UK), and Richard Vyse (USA).

JULIO

Julio was wearing a white shirt which fell loosely over his chest and was tied beneath. He was small, skinny, the skin brown and stretched tightly over his ribs. He wriggled and moved so constantly that he looked on the point of squirming out of his clothes. He had on thin trousers

which clutched him gently under the navel and, tight as they were, kept sliding up and down over his hips. When they rested on his pelvic bones, a thin trickle of black hair was revealed at the waist, hinting at the mysteries below.

Herman, could not keep his eyes off him, the way he moved and flung his arms in the air. The way he laughed with a wide open mouth so that he that the vivid pink of his tongue was revealed, like a wild salmon flapping at the end of a fisherman’s line. But Herman was also a guy from the slums. What did he know of wild salmon? Julio noticed him watching and crinkled his nose.

His father talked slowly, stumbling through his maze of problems, grasping so intensely for English that he did not notice the lawyer staring at Julio, who slithered out of his flip-flops and swung an arched foot back and forth, staring down at it lazily. He looked up and caught Herman’s head swinging along with his stretched out leg and wriggled his toes at him.

Herman found himself wet all over, dribbling from every body cavity. Spittle drooled down his cheek. His groin became clammy and tears fogged his vision. Angel continued to talk and Herman pretended to listen, his eyes wandering hungrily over Julio’s body. The heat in the room was oppressive and the noise from the street pierced his ears in pinpricks. His mouth was parched, his head heavy. The room was spinning as he nodded along with Angel’s stuttering monologue.

The boy jumped from his seat, racing across the room to the kitchen, where he prepared a glass of iced water and brought it to Herman. He stood close while the older man gulped it down, shifting slowly from one leg to another. Herman could feel his groin want to move with him. His nostrils snorted hungrily to catch more of his smell as his mouth sucked on the glass. Julio bent for the glass when Herman was through, brushing his sleeve across Herman’s cheek and allowing their legs to slightly touch. Herman could feel a tidal wave of passion break against his rib cage.

Angel stopped talking abruptly and looked up with bleary eyes. “What should I do, Mr. Counselor? What else can I do?”

“Don’t worry, Angel,” said the lawyer, rubbing a dry tongue over parched lips. “We’ll take care of this fast enough.”

“But what? What to do? I need the money, Mr. Lawyer.”

“All right, Angel, all right,” he said, rising abruptly, buttoning his jacket over his expansive belly. “I have all the information. Now you leave it up to me.”

“I can’t wait.”

“I have friends,” Herman said, hurriedly packing his briefcase. “We’ll straighten this out as fast as we can.”

The old man sighed and nodded unhappily as Herman slipped into his overcoat and headed for the door.

“Don’t worry, Angel. I’ll call you in a day or two.”

“Julio!” Angel called. “See the lawyer to the door.” Strangely enough, there was something in the order that revealed how deeply Angel loved his son.

Herman stopped in his path, fighting to say “no, don’t bother,” searching in vain for his voice.

“I’ll walk him to his car,” the boy said. “He don’t know the neighborhood.” And the boy loved his father.

 Herman’s head started to tremble helplessly, just short of a wag. Julio took his arm and led him to the door.

“Good boy,” said Angel, heading sleepily toward the couch.

The weight on Herman’s arm was like a bird’s. Julio skipped along, giggling and gossiping, waving to friends, proud to be seen with Herman. whose entire practice was in the slums. He had been born nearby. He knew dozens of people on the block, even though he now lived in the suburbs. With his good wife. Two fine sons. He felt his head sliding into the collar of his coat. His steps got longer and longer, forcing Julio to skip faster to keep up. Herman stared straight ahead and answered the flow of chatter only with nods, in terror that people would see.

But he could feel through the thick cloth of his coat the butterfly movements of Julio’s hips as he swayed back and forth and when he whispered into Herman’s ear, ripples of air caressed the lawyer’s cheek.

The car was parked a few blocks away and the walk, on the way to the house, had not bothered Herman at all. But he was having a hard time breathing this time around. He attributed his rasping pants to the quickened pace and he felt tight knots of tension in his neck as if he had been clamped in a strait jacket all day, perhaps all of his life, and had suddenly been released.

Julio clung to his arm at the car while he fumbled with his keys.

“You’ve got to come again,” he said, smiling. “Come for supper. Papa talks about you all the time. He says you’re the best lawyer in the world!”

Herman moaned in reply and turned, smiling lamely, to say goodbye. Staring directly at the boy was painful. He caught Julio’s eyes lingering on the lawyer’s face with adoration, lips carefully forming forming his words to impress. His body pressed against him hungrily and the corners of his mouth trembled with desire.

“It must be wonderful to be a lawyer. Especially you. You’re so young.

“Tell your father not to worry.”

“You must be the smartest man I ever met.”

“Tell him I’ll call as soon as I have some news.”

“It must be wonderful to help people in trouble.”

“Next week, next week, I’ll call for sure.

In his eagerness to get away, he brushed Julio’s arm away too quickly and he, like a sparrow, jumped back and brought his fingers to his mouth in shame. Herman refused to look but focused on starting the car with watery fingers. Then he squinted tensely at the road and slid the car away, sure in his shimmering heart that he would crash before he got home.

All those years, he thought as he drove, going to law school at night, driving a cab during the day, making his refugee parents proud, getting a job with the Workmen’s Compensation Board so there was no risk, always a weekly salary, seeing immigrant clients in their living rooms, doing the right thing, studying hard, keeping his head down, the good boy, the good husband, the good father, as he climbed the ladder of American success. Making his parents proud.

Now he was driving breathlessly, no question about it, he knew it before he knew it, into a head-on flaming crash.

Edward M. Cohen's story collection, "Before Stonewall," was published by Awst Press, his novel, "$250,000," by G.P. Putnam's Sons; his novella, "A Visit to my Father with my SOn," by Running Wild Press; his chapbook, "Grim Gay Tales," by Fjords Review. His stories, “Jay” and “In the Mouth,” appeared previously in Wicked Gay Ways. He can be found on Instagram @ Edward M. Cohen.

CELIA

I wake to another hot, airless day, naked. It’s been three days since I last saw Celia. Just as I’m thinking it, just as I’m thinking of the way her long legs in shorts strode towards me on the bridge where we last met, just as I’m thinking of how her thighs stuck for a second to the plastic of her bar stool when she rose, later, to order another drink, just as I’m thinking of her bottom lip with its freckle, how she pinioned it between her teeth and looked up from under her eyelashes at me, a challenge I rose to, locking eyes with her until she lowered hers to look down at the bar table — just then, Celia rings.

“When can I see you again?” she asks, no hello. My fingers dance over my belly button. As we talk, a light breeze licks through the open window, and then it’s gone. I wonder who’s watching from the windows across the small courtyard. In their mirrored surfaces I can see only the sky.

We meet on the old airfield. Inline skaters zoom in 8 km long circuits around us, kites and swifts dance on invisible air currents far above. It smells of the nearby biscuit factory. It smells of her suncream. I spread a blanket and we settle in the long grass on our stomachs. She has her eyes closed.

“Tell me something,” Celia says. My tongue meets the conch shell of her ear and doesn’t move much. She's salty. “Please,” she says.

"Ask me again," I say.

"Please," she says.

"What?"

"Please," she says, begging now.

”Let me tell you something,“ I whisper, and watch as the warm air of what I’m telling her passes over and through her. I am close enough to see the finest of the downy hair at the nape of her neck tremble.

Everything I tell Celia she already knows. They are stories about herself that she has told me in bed, on her living room floor, pushed up against shower door. I tell these stories back to her, and she listens like they didn't happen to her, like she's me hearing them be told by her.

I tell her about the time she went climbing trees, sticky with melon juice, brown as a chestnut from months of summer. The sun went down and she was alone. She straddled the highest branch strong enough to take her weight and then lay down, belly to branch, wrapped her legs around it. The bark pressed roughly into her thighs. Celia thought about nothing but the tree. She rose and fell like the sea, felt herself get wet. Felt waves of hot urgency, the inevitability of them crashing. Into her ear I breathe the rush of salt water on shingles, breathe the sound made by the pull of the tide, the drag of pebbles over pebbles.

I tell Celia about how, as she pressed herself hard into the branch, she imagined herself standing at the foot of the tree. She was someone else looking up. She was someone else watching her shut-eyed pleasure. And in the tree she came for the first time ever, an electric wave passing over and through her. After Celia came, she came down. She was flushed, her thighs marked with moss and bark.

I find the crevices of Celia's ear with my tongue as I’m talking. I’m telling the story very slowly, very deliberately, and in between I lick her ear, bite down gently on her earlobe and pull. She moans. The sun beats down and a small bead of sweat pearls slowly down her temple. I lick it off.

I tell Celia about the time she went to Naples with a girlfriend. The narrow bed they shared, sleeping under a white sheet, their bodies sticking together. Their window looked out onto a market square. It was always loud, even at night, but they didn’t care. On the second day they went down and bought mozzarella, mortadella, lemons. Small deep purple grapes. Upstairs they put the grapes in their mouths and peeled them with their teeth. They undressed hastily, they kept the smooth peeled grapes under their tongues as they kissed. Celia was wearing white underwear that she stained purple with grape-smeared fingerprints as she pulled them off. They had their fingers in each other's hair, and the small grapes seemed so much larger in their mouths than they’d looked at the market. Celia's girlfriend pulled her down onto the bed and knelt over her. With their mouths pressed together, they passed the grapes between them, kissed grape against grape, hard, tasted the sweetness of their saliva as the skinless membranes split. The seeds crunched between their teeth when they bit down, her girlfriend left a trail of them from her clavicle to her pubic bone.

On the old airfield. Celia lies on her front, her face turned into mine. She has opened her eyes and is looking intently into mine as I speak. She’s breathing faster and harder, a tension in her body as she presses herself into the ground. We’re oblivious to everything. The thwack of a football, electro music from afar, the insidious early evening smell of meat on barbecues. She runs her fingers along my forearm. It’s the smallest of movements, but it sends shivers down my spine. My legs are liquid, my body melts into the ground. Her breath is hotter than the air, and I’m aware, acutely aware, that as she’s circling her thumb slowly, so gently it’s barely touching my skin and I think I might be imagining it, I’m aware that the breath I’m breathing is the same as the breath she’s breathing. The smallest of movements in her hips as she writhes with a frustrated pleasure against the ground. She doesn’t take her eyes away from mine.

In Naples, Celia’s girlfriend knelt over Celia and began to lick her, her thighs, her belly, between her legs. She licked her as slowly as Celia right now is stroking circles in the soft skin of my inner forearm.

Her girlfriend licked Celia so gently she barely touched Celia’s skin with her tongue, and Celia thought she might be imagining it. As her girlfriend ran her tongue over Celia, Celia arched her back, lifted her pelvis, tried to push herself into her girlfriend’s mouth. But her girlfriend pulled back a little. She pushed Celia’s pelvis with one hand and held her still as she rolled the grape, warm from her mouth, over her clit. Celia gasped. Her girlfriend pressed it against her with her tongue, but stopped when she felt Celia’s body begin to tense. She righted herself for a second and sat there looking down at Celia, flushed and a little triumphant. They were both sweating, despite the breeze coming in through the open window. “Don’t stop,” Celia ordered, and her ex-girlfriend laughed, took her time going back down.

Lying there partially hidden by the long grass of the airfield, telling Celia about her girlfriend and the grapes, I feel how wet I am. I push my fingers under the waistband of my shorts, feel the damp of the cotton, press my fingers into myself, and Celia pulls them out again. She says, “Don’t.” And she says, “Don’t stop talking”. The circles she draws on my arm are firmer, faster. She is pushing her hips into the ground, like it’s me she’s fucking, and I wonder if she's wet, too.

Fine, I say, and I tell Celia how her ex-girlfriend kept licking her, kept rolling the grape over her, and then how she pushed the grape into her with the tip of her tongue. How she followed with two fingers and fucked her faster, harder. And I tell Celia how, again, she knew it would happen, she felt the storm of it coming, was in the eye of the storm, was thinking of nothing but the flicking of her ex-girlfriend’s tongue, the grape, her fingers, her clit. And then I tell her how she came. When I describe to her how her back arched and her fingers clenched at the white sheet, at her girlfriend’s shoulders and hair, how she screamed, that the window was open, that her girlfriend came up then and held her, put her hand gently over Celia’s mouth, which she bit, when I tell her all this, and how she shuddered until the storm had passed, Celia, lying on her belly still, grips my arm, encircles it with her hands and squeezes, her fingernails pressing crescent moons into my skin that we’ll discover later, and she arches her back and shudders until the storm passes, with me holding her.

Charlotte Wührer is a queer writer and literary translator from the UK. She lives in Berlin, where she is currently writing a novel about desire and messy polyamorous situations. She has been published in print and online, and has written for an audio porn app.

What It Is

what is It? you know,

more than smooth legs,

close knees, lip bit, with

that giggle? (you know

what it is)– a lava lamp–

what all men want–

circulating– to mount

a hill with the rising sun

(for from the top there is

the layout) & go down

when day is done

(for from the bottom comes the spread).

~

with my right hand i massage his Easter

eggs; with my left hand i caress his leg,

touch his sutures, remember Mortality

& sink into my knees.

Chase White lives in Athens, Ga, with his husband and puppy. You'll find him practicing massage during the work week and by Sandy Creek when the day is free. For updates on further publications, follow him on instagram @reluctant.luddite.

“Where the Jordan River runs into the Dead Sea”

Ivan. Thomas. Victor.

Left. Left. Left.

The rusted carriage rocked and swayed as it bumped along the dry, cracked terrain. Northward. For hours now, northward.

Simon. His blackcurrant lips were full, but faint, pitted scars ran from his temples to his jaw, as if his cheeks had leisurely been papered with concertina pleats.

Left.

Through the jarred window, the whistling wind blew clouds of pollen. The tickle in my throat, present since I embarked, now sent its asthmatic protests to my nose, which begun to run profusely. I continued swiping to distract myself from the wattle pollinating my lungs.

Elliot. A kerchief circleted his hairline. Probably receding.

Left.

My collection had stalled for the second half of my journey. Away from the city, the profiles were grotesque, as if where the trainline intersected with these hayseed brick-pits, the gormless masses had never parted a centrefold and discovered beauty.

That was until I reached Jordan, 26.

His name alone lightened the velvet-swathed chambers of my heart. His forearms were blade-clipped down to a Luther Vandross smoothness. His features were strong and vulpine. And where the wind caught his taupe drop-sleeve singlet, I saw the subtle crescent of a half-exposed areola shaded a deep ecchymotic brown.

His profile had three photos. Three captivating, no, three blessed photos. In the first, Jordan, sun-draped atop a greensward, swaddled by the rich seasonal bloom of a backlit vineyard, burst grapes in his mouth, purples and crimsons splashing across his whitened incisors. In the second, he was savouring a platter of cured meats and artisanal sliced wedges of aged Parisian cheese, his face radiant. In the third, he was posed in an ornate arabesque, a steel chisel held beguilingly between those pink, parted sweet-lips.

Jordan. True connoisseur. Sommelier. Weekend gourmand. Sculptor. The creator and the creation. Jordan…

In every photograph, rogue chestnut strands licked the hollows of his cheeks like viscid ropes of molasses. His jaw... Each burgeoning bristle was neatly trimmed to accentuate the angular, sculpted bone. His skin would be satin, his voice a mellow and gravelly baritone, and his cologne... his cologne...

As my olfactory imagination floundered, evoking only a vague wall of scentless ambergris, the fibrous motes that previously plagued me ripened - ripened - bursting with rich earthen notes and dizzying storms of redolent floral, so that with every pining breath, I breathed in Jordan.

My jeans felt wet, as a warm, syrupy droplet, leaking from the swelling grazing the underside of my zipper, threatened to soak through two layers of fabric. A portly man with ruddy cheeks sat several rows ahead of me. His wax-like bulk melted over multiple seats, and his corpulent face seemed blind to everything but his newspaper. I could risk it, I thought. Though, as my fingers slowly descended, the train suddenly lurched, and the fat man broke from the paper’s hypnosis, casting a glance around the carriage.

A honeyed, golden warmth continued to build deep in my abdomen, sending pacifying throbs to my inner thighs. It could not wait. Jordan could not wait. I covered the stretched-denim bulge, darted to the vestibule, locked myself into the toilet, and in the quietude, I unshackled.

Upwards, in ecstasy, my head titled. I shuttered my eyelids, squinting in a citric wince. Dazzling fluorescence punctured through the blackness, birthing wisp-like specks, and wayward stars. I was drowning in the vast firmament, floating among a constellation of anglers. I was close. Closer. Closer still. I bit down hard, serrated enamel splitting my bottom lip, iron-rich blood lacquering my palette. But I tasted only him, the bitter, salted, sweat-braised musk secreting from his armpits. The coarse-ringlet bliss nested in the crook between his hips. Then below, to where he hardened and thickened. As rapture pitched, on my shallow breath the long rhythm of anguished whimpers kept steady pace with the pulse I held in my hand. And when, finally, I was there, so was he: Jordan, Jordan, Jordan.

I washed my hands and returned to my seat. The train rocked, and bucked, and jostled. A sombre, steady nausea peeled the inner lining of my throat, and I found myself picking slivers of soap cemented beneath my fingernails. Rubbing the nails. Tearing the nails. Flaying strips of flesh from quick to cuticle. To distract myself from the harm, I looked out the window. Seas of wilted juniper flashed by my opaque window as the carriage careened about ceaseless bends. Ochre-hued blurs blended through the bark of straggling eucalypts, blackened at their branch-tips by flame and rot. Dusk’s lambent light fell listless. Gloom grew wherever the fires had died.

Three aches assailed me. The bloodied, abraded ruin flanking my nail beds and the lingering ghost of euphoria softened minute-by-minute. But the third insatiable pain... As the high-crested waves of my passion receded, littered across the strand was only the ammonic, gull-pecked carcass of melancholia and a towering embankment of vacant clarity. Jordan… Who are you, Jordan?

But as I reached for my phone to find him, he was nowhere to be found. The place where Jordan once stood, a pretender lay. The radiant, bronzed halo that once shone from his bare shoulders was now buried under a sickly patina of moss, and the rosy flush of a week spent lounging in a wicker chair had faded to a stark, Soviet grey. It was a shadow, a silhouette, a pale imitation. But still, it bore his name. Jordan. Jordan.

I recoiled in disgust. Jordan was right, it was a thing of the depths, a forgotten relic meant for a dead sea.

Driven by fear and frenzy, I scrolled through the album. Hanging limply from elongated fingers, the harvest of grapes had become a bundle of fungus-fleshed roe, rupturing between rotting teeth. A thick, black froth congealed around the corners of its engorged lips. The once enchanting bite now sent currents of dark, oily fluid, like acrid pus lanced from swollen buboes, streaming down its cadaverous chin. No, chins. Masses of bloated flesh, sprouting a kraken-like tendril of beard between the folds of fat.

Jordan was no more. There was only it. It, feasting on a morass of burrowing worms. It, plucking the wings from freshly hatched cicadas. It, contorting bones into ungodly shapes. But all the while, the Stygian apparition wore a knowing smile, seemingly unfazed, beneath a rotting nose marred by pox and frostbite. And atop that fox-like bridge, leering through taut, mirror-like slits, was a flicker of frozen hostility.

It saw me. And it knew.

I pondered how to slough the shame from my palms. How to beg for forgiveness, repent, atone. And while my crises fattened on regret, as if cursed by an old-world malediction, the application swiped down, revealing its brief two-word biography - a paltry string of inky blots that wrung the last trickle of pride from my parched soul.

Power bottom.

For an hour I sat in silence.

As the train pulled into the station, I swiped left.

Ezekiel Eastbrook (he/him) was born and raised in the farmlands of the Australian countryside. At the age of 18, an unknown virus cleaved his health clean from his body. He never fully recovered. Living with myalgic encephalomyelitis, he explores sexual identity, disability, and loneliness through his creative writings. You can follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ezekielebrook & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ezekielebrook/

“I once heard that the tongue/ gives life/ and so I spoke into her”

I conjured a whaleghost                      whistle from bottle edge                     I pursed my lips &

thought of the cracking

            of glass against teeth that quick sound           of water     

lapping

of bath drawn              I was beside myself                            in the mirror                I was side-eye

                        in the steam                             I was abandonee expiating                 bubble

-chained my ankles pinkening

sometimes lights at night in unexpected places seem like dreams fallen

sometimes I’m afraid of myself my capacity for ritual

                                                                                                                                                to

sustain the orchestration of teasing

surrendering to cataclysm       of that of                                 both body                                           

but also the abstractions within

                                    one can get spoiled                 being delivered &                                                      

delivered & delivered

            one can                                    withdraw                                             with withdraw

Top Security Cleaning Girl

Sometimes I’ll do almost anything not to do the things

I’ve to

the name above my door reads Dream & I won’t apologize

for that

I’m the kind that wants to pick her ingrowns among the stars

for practice

I’m packing a used emerald initialed bag with a vaudeville wardrobe I won’t part with

praytell on what occasion

do I fancy I’ll again need the four-piece felt sweater & burnt pumpkin suede pullup balloon

pants?

whatever it is I’m sure it will require

a wig

& a debriefing

perhaps the tiger skirt

for a garden brunch but still the unsolved ? of to

be paired with what? on top

I chose to leave out the bowed

pocketed neon skeletal apron minidress

as uniform so when

Blue Jeans

came on I took it as a sign

to polish my

boots as well

Flower Conroy: LGBTQ+ artist, NEA and MacDowell Fellow, and former Key West Poet Laureate, Flower Conroy’s books include “Snake Breaking Medusa Disorder,” “A Sentimental Hairpin" and “Greenest Grass” (winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize, forthcoming 2023). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in New England Review, American Literary Review, The Yale Review and elsewhere. Facebook/Instagram: Flower Conroy, Twitter: @flower_conroy

Nashville ‘98

His voice followed me

Across the front yard

Pleasing when he tries to impress me

Speaking Italian.

Even more

When I see the smile

Following me

Bare chest framed by the window

A place to rest my head

Perhaps.

To reciprocate

Impossible

The greetings chase the country blues away.

I wonder how strong

He is.

Strong enough to break down

Barriers?

I want to break him

Out of his fragile prison.

Giovanni Vitacolonna entered adulthood as a Franciscan friar until his spirit drove him to San Francisco,  actually it was a 1969 Volkswagen van. Eventually he found himself in Italy working as an English teacher and in film and music promotion..  He is the published author of  “A Sweet and Sour Romance” (1982) and was editor for Philadelphia's Au Courant.  The creator of the satirical serial ‘Between Two Rivers’, he worked for Billboard, New York  Adweek and for POZ and Real Health magazines. A cabaret singer performing in small clubs in Manhattan and Philadelphia, Giovanni recently developed the television series “Center City”   a project he is currently advancing for production and development. Facebook --  @giovannivtacolona & Instagram - @giovitaco.

To The Beautiful Woman

To the beautiful woman from last night,

I saw you across the bar

your black dress hugging curves in all the

 right places

the light glistening on your lip gloss

begging me to kiss you

 the shy smile you gave when you noticed

me looking

To the beautiful woman from last night,

I decide to shoot my shot and say hello

your voice is music to my ears

when you said it back

the way you turned to face me

inviting my hands to rest on your lush hips

 the way you leaned close

and all I can smell is your perfume

and all I can think is how much

I want to be between your thighs

To the beautiful woman from last night,

I like the way you look up at me

with lust in your eyes

I like the way you lean into me

pressing your curves against me

I like the way your breath catches

when I tell you what I want to do to you

how I want to kiss you

how I want to strip you

how I want to tease you

how I want to fuck you

To the beautiful woman from last night,

I want to wake up remembering the sounds you make

your moans

your whimpers

your screams of pleasure

 I want to wake up with your taste on my

tongue

my mouth watering for more

 I want to wake up with the memory of you

on your knees

being such a good girl for me

I want to wake up reliving the memory of

last night

To the beautiful woman from last night,

I want to be the reason why your fingers

trail over your skin

taking the same path mine did

I want to be the reason why you get wet

simply at the thought of me

I want to be the reason why no one

will ever be able to fuck you as good

I want to be the best you've ever had

But not because I was the first woman you

ever fucked.

To the beautiful woman from last night,

I will not be your lesbian experiment.

Jerilyn Alderman-Hansson (she/her) is a Cree/Dene two-spirited Indigenous mother from Saskatchewan, Stanley Mission, Treaty 6 territory. She currently resides in Saskatoon where she graduated from the University of Saskatchewan with two bachelor's degrees in Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies. She is a published author and exhibited artist who believes in incorporating heritage, culture, sexuality, and sensuality in her work. She can be contacted via Instagram @mizjeri

The Seekers

Our bodies an entanglement

we search for feelings we haven’t had yet

and may never know

I reach around and grab your wrists

And hold you down

A thing so unexpected it’s expected

What about there I ask? In real time,

not here where the liminal rules

and time means nothing

I feel your pulse,

as your heart quickens

It can be anything, I say

Anything really

And brush my face against yours

And you say nothing anyone can hear

You give in easily

Released from everyday burdens

The art of status play

Intertwined in a web of the senses

Not yet understood

We fall into something or somewhere

Feelings without words to discuss them

We walk around with appearances-

a separateness we no longer know

And you say, there is so little time

And I say, I’m here now

And the moment took you

Or maybe it was the gin

And you on top we find a way

To forget where you end, and I begin

Laurie Greene is a professor of Anthropology and Embodiment, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Stockton University. She is the founder of the LGBTQ+ Youth Safe Space, the President of AC Pride, a 501C3 in Atlantic City, and the author of books on the gendered body including Drag Queens & Beauty Queens: Contesting gender in the world's playground (Rutgers 2020). You can find follow her @ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/proflaurieagreene/ Webpage: https://laurieagreene.com/ and via Email: laurie.greene@stockton.edu

pejorative

i never understood

the word

cocksucker

as a pejorative expression

sure, it’s use is a form of

homophobia,

tossed around by young men,

and bros and fellas from South Boston,

but unless you’ve tried it,

are you sure you know

the expression isn’t more of a

complement

than a pejorative?

jerk off

i wrestle with addiction

it ties me to a bedpost

bent over and naked

fist fucked into oblivion

memories rejoined with sorrow

echoes of footsteps

walking the other way

Jacklyn Henry is a transfeminine genderqueer writer based on the fringe of sanity, Los Angeles. when she is not searching for an authentic reality, Jacklyn has been published at: flying dodo, the erozine, H S T, pink disco, SCAB magazine, fifth wheel press, snowflake, and elsewhere. Jacklyn writes an occasional column at Cream Scene Carnival called Transfeminine.