Joseph Ambrosini, Only known photograph of the first night of the Stonewall Riots
the first pride was a riot
Emma Johnson-Rivard
today, beloved, we dissolve
before the sky cuts us strange
before the bombs and our
notions written into will and
bone, our poems kindling. i
have dreamt too many funerals
but the cat set my soul right. have
you seen the sky today? we will die
one day, we are due for it. the plague
years changed us. we loved too loud,
you and i. the cat understood this through
teeth, her fang to my palm, blood in the
veins. if the world means to kill us, it
will have to bite past the skull. i will
not make it clean.
Emma Johnson-Rivard
today, beloved, we dissolve
before the sky cuts us strange
before the bombs and our
notions written into will and
bone, our poems kindling. i
have dreamt too many funerals
but the cat set my soul right. have
you seen the sky today? we will die
one day, we are due for it. the plague
years changed us. we loved too loud,
you and i. the cat understood this through
teeth, her fang to my palm, blood in the
veins. if the world means to kill us, it
will have to bite past the skull. i will
not make it clean.