Readings: COME HEAR! 2025

For the second year in a row, poet-impressario Regie Cabico invited me to curate an hour of COME HEAR!, the annual LGBTQIA+ poetry marathon at the Rainbow Book Fair. For the 2025 lineup, I pulled together poets who were nearly all new to this event -- namely, Daniel Meltz (It Wasn't Easy to Reach You), Pamela Booker, Jerome Ellison Murphy, Joey De Jesus (NOCT: The Threshold of Madness), Jee Leong Koh (Inspector Inspector), and Celine Lowenthal. But unlike last time, I also read my own poems, ones which I felt had a kinship to the works of each of these writers. My fellow curators were Cabico (A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex and Other Hyperboles, Mysteries, Parables and Fantasias), Malcolm Tariq (Heed the Hollow), and Casey Catherine Moore (Psyche). Once again, the event was held in the beautiful Pat Parker/Vito Russo Center Library on the top floor of New York City's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center.

Photo by Claire Bellerjeau.