Danez Smith is a black, queer, non-binary, and HIV-positive writer and performer. They have won multiple awards for their poetry and are one of the founding members of the Dark Noise Collective, an organisation which describes itself as "a multiracial, multi-genre collective of some of today's most exciting poets".
Their poem The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar speaks to the importance of queer spaces and celebrates that first experience of freedom to be queer. While we can't have physical spaces at Pride this year, we can hold onto the fact that it will not be forever and this freedom and joy will be ours again soon.
The 17-Year-Old & the Gay Bar
this gin-heavy heaven, blessed ground to think gay & mean we. bless the fake id & the bouncer who knew this need to be needed, to belong, to know how a man taste full on vodka & free of sin. i know not which god to pray to. i look to christ, i look to every mouth on the dance floor, i order a whiskey coke, name it the blood of my new savior. he is just. he begs me to dance, to marvel men with the dash of hips i brought, he deems my mouth in some stranger’s mouth necessary. bless that man’s mouth, the song we sway sloppy to, the beat, the bridge, the length of his hand on my thigh & back & i know not which country i am of. i want to live on his tongue, build a home of gospel & gayety i want to raise a city behind his teeth for all boys of choirs & closets to refuge in. i want my new god to look at the mecca i built him & call it damn good or maybe i’m just tipsy & free for the first time, willing to worship anything i can taste.
Read more of their poetry here.
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