After Dani Putney’s “PDX Queen”
This world has too many poems, not enough queens.
Some think they go together like Absolut vodka and a parade.
A parade can sell vodka, but you can’t have enough
time to read a poem plastered on the side of a float.
There may be space on the side of the float, and you can try
to walk alongside it down the road, but you’ll forget it soon enough.
Soon enough, you’ll forget the poem when you instead
read that a bill was passed, that an adoption paper was denied.
The poem is denied a place in your mind when it has to worry
if it’s safe to enter your space, whether or not its identity is respected.
Respect can only come after the poem has made it impossible
to deny, when it tosses a bottle of Absolut at a line of police.
The police may try to erase its existence, but it will always persist, for
this world has so many poems, but not enough queens.