Anacreon or Ibycus (from the court of Polycrates of Samos)

Kent Leatham

Queer Is...

The scent of lilac unfurling in the garden
in the morning as Phoebus rubs oil on the sun

sucks. The soldiers are already taken,
their wives are too loyal, their daughters too young,

and their sons won’t look twice at an old man
with a stiff crotch and a flaccid tongue.

Whatever. It’s not like my knees still bend
that well anyway. Love is dung.


Kent Leatham is a poet and translator. His work has appeared in dozens of journals, including Ploughshares, Fence, Poetry Quarterly, InTranslation, and Softblow, as well as in the 2013 Montreal Poetry Prize Global Anthology. Kent holds an MFA from Emerson College, and teaches at California State University Monterey Bay.