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Even though there was never a time in my life when I thought I was straight, I found a deep camaraderie in this wonderful collection. The poems are diverse in style and form, but all speak to the tireless pressures of fitting into a heteronormative world before we are awake to our queerness. Whether lyric or narrative, the poems present poignant and powerful stories. Nicole Tallman who hung onto hope like my mother, / who said she’d rather I had cancer / than be that way. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word gay. And Regie Cabico, Open-mouthed . . . / warbled a high G as the glorious mysteries / bulged under [his] cassock. This is an essential book as we each live through the glorious mysteries and the relentless push back of our culture. Ultimately, it shows us that as Emma Bolden writes, being is being, is beautiful, and enough.
— Subhaga Crystal Bacon, author of Transitory
When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton is poet/editor Dustin Brookshire’s brainchild: invite LGBTQIA+ poets to write poems named for Seaton’s titular classic, and see what happens. This anthology will be a classic in gender studies, as well as poetry. I schooled myself in distance, observes J.D. Islip. What did I know about myself that wasn’t a key in the wrong lock? asks Diamond Forde. Travis Chi Wing Lau recalls, I relearned how to walk/…The upright gait of a man/walking away from himself.” Julie Marie Wade explains, I did not love women as I do now./I loved them with my eyes closed, my back turned. Mel Sherrer states, I knew what women could do/alone together in a room–/or alone in this world. This is an anthology that shows each and every reader that they are not alone in this world.
—Suzanne Cleary, author of The Odd
Dustin Brookshire 