Grant Chemidlin
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Grant Chemidlin is a queer poet living in Los Angeles. He is the author of the chapbook New in Town (Bottlecap Press, 2022), the illustrated collection He Felt Unwell (So He Wrote This), and the full-length collection What We Lost in the Swamp (Central Avenue Publishing, 2023). He's been a finalist for the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award, the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, and Atlanta Review's International Poetry Contest. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Quarterly West, Iron Horse Literary Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and Saranac Review, among others.
Leather Bars
I say, I’m gay but not
that gay.
The straight
laughs. I laugh
though my face
inside stays
straight. Facing it
straight-on
is a room
with no
walls. The joke
hanging
in the air
between us
is the length
of a sword.
Only one end
is sharp.
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