Poems
The First Drag Show Was a Church Service
The First Drag Show Was a Church Service Holy. Massive. Stiff-collared men dawning shiny seasonal robes. Stoles and bright tassels. Hands crossing hearts. Fingers placing flat white heavens on the tongues of kneeling believers.
Living in My Mother’s House While She Lives in Her Mother’s House
I moved the yellow bowl to the dining room. I put it on the bookshelf in front of the Atheist books. The bowl has a flat bottom like a dog bowl. It is soft yellow like the time before television.
Trainhopper
Trainhopper has a sick ferret in his shirt the whole night. Tiny claws grip his chest hairs, furry bottom nestles in palm. Every so often, he pushes a bottle of cow milk into the sick creature’s mouth and takes a swig of whisky.
The Night We Plucked One Thousand Prickly Burrs From Her Ass
was strangely erotic. Each time the tweezers grabbed hold of a small stinging ghost, her butt cheeks winced and the backs of her thighs tightened, like the nervous flinch of a first kiss.
Dear Lemon Engine II
If I only had five pairs of socks, all the same color. If I drank a gallon of water and went on a walk every day. If I got rid of everything
The Hottest Day
Every air conditioner in the city is broken. The wind cakes around our thighs, curdles in our hair. My breasts are musty plums,
When The Students Ask About the Significance of Goats in My Book
There are goats because Megan was an opera singer who left college to become an anarchist.
GEBO {or Excerpts From My Failed Dating Profile}
I'm ridiculous amounts of get-down. I like vintage aprons, photos of people I don't know and laughing so hard I snort.
Tally of Queerdom
We take turns giggling. Shifting from femme bones to boy bones. Quiet maneuvering through the landscape of energies. Identity is a swing. We are straddled like spiders.
Escitalopram
Some scientists don’t believe in free will. The physics of it mainly. Our brains lighting up before thoughts even occur seems like maybe they are sent by a programmer,
The Lust for Matter
I suppose you mean the sweat that clings to the forehead, gives in to dripping, bass that barrels through speakers to find our hips circling like vulture beaks…
Funeral for April
A nurse was shot while pumping gas by a guy who yelled, “You’re infecting the public!” The hospital sent an email saying you are no longer…
Pep Talk for Girl Singers
When your heart has slipped from its case, bounced across the driveway and landed in the mint green lawn chair…
According to the Planets
According to our planets and ancestors, our year begins and ends in Spring. The moon was a bored lion when I got my hot watermelon. My hair was a drop of lava turned to ice. If I become a turtle it's because I can’t face this much light.
Confessions of an Uneducated Queer
I don’t really understand Judith Butler. I once tried to reference “fucult” at a party and my friend politely corrected me and said, it’s pronounced…
Energy Drinks
[From TEDx OKC] I face a glass case with rows and rows of ENERGY. Pulsing and inviting like car crash wreckage…
To the Oklahoma Lawmakers
Who passed SB 1878 requiring an ultrasound prior to an abortion. Why don’t you print out the ultrasound pictures and pastel frame them?
Personhood
My grandfather tells me, all beet red cheeks and puffed chest, that he is pro-life because my mother would not have been born…
Poem for my Girlfriend the Trauma Nurse
The black holes are resorting to violence again. Gathering stars by the fistful like some bully on the playground tossing back Skittles shaken from the pockets of the puniest galaxies.
Video by Sterlin Harjo
Way back in 2011, Sterlin Harjo, known for FX show Reservation Dogs and award-winning films like Barking Water, made a promo video for Lauren that features samples of several of her most popular poems.
Video by Jerre B. Fine
Circa 2012, Jerre B. Fine made this promo video for Lauren that features samples of poems and a cameo from beloved queer activist poet, Andrea Gibson.