A GATHERING OF OUR PRIDE 2025, GATHERING FIRE
The poets in this collection offer love, laughter, and queer resistance in the threat of unimaginable erasures. These poets represent the activist and literary voices serving a Capital City in turmoil. Jona Colson gives us the power of hydrangeas in winter and a family bond to pull us through our cynicism. Ishanee Chanda brings the globe and its battles, inspiring us to find the home in hope, while Sunu P. Chandy brings compassion on a bus ride. Saundra Rose Maley depicts the distances between family bonds with a gut-punch ending full of pride. There’s ribald humor with Adrian Gaston Garcia’s metaphor of an Olive Garden breadstick, and Tanya Olson uses repetition to shake the domestic roles that have confined gender. Malik Thompson’s lyricism warns of the “committee of vultures” and the “bones that sparkle” in defiance of a regime. There are love poems to make you weep and ache and say awe: Dwayne Lawson-Brown’s first taste of a rainbow, Natalie E. Illums’ physical yearning in a loyal lover’s touch of the hand, Kim Roberts’ ode to her lover’s madras shorts, and Hiram Larew reminds us we are all in this together. Michelle Parkerson summons the BIPOC voices who have always fought and held us up because a furtive glance has power, a desire so strong, we become flashes of lightning, we are gathering fire and shelter in the storm. The storm is now, and we will not be silent. As Dan Vera writes:
Holy the glimmer of recognition
in the eyes of those we sought,
who reflected back that fraction of belonging,
who spoke without words
what the heart would dare admit.
Regie Cabico
MLK Library, Washington, DC
May 31, 2025
IN CELEBRATION OF WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN STEVE CANNON’S 90TH BIRTHDAY - APRIL 10, 2025
SEGUE READING SERIES NOVEMBER 2024 FEATURED POETS
SEGUE READING SERIES OCTOBER 2024 FEATURED POETS
TRIBES’ MAGAZINE ONLINE SPECIAL ISSUE: EDITORS EDITION
Celebrating 2020-2024
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