For every queen...

For every queen, every fairy, every gay boy. For the neat-hipped sprites with a twinkle in the
throat, for the hissing nymphs with fruit in their vocals.

Raise up your gay voice, let it lilt and fizzle, as if your tongue was protesting your teeth, lick
round your vowels as they clot air.

Marsha P Johnson used her voice to blaze history in place, queer howls, tinkling chants,
echoing down the bloodlines.

Even her name rouses movement - Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, march those words out with the
machinery of sound.

For the benders scared of questions, worried their answers might start glowing in the mouth,
a gum bright flame.

Raise up your gay voice until every gay voice meets in a shrill cacophony of the fabulous, an
orchestra of faggots, singing sweet into the ozone.

Macerate shame in your saliva’s liquor, don’t stop until each word glitters, language smelting
on the body like a lozenge.

For sissies, lisping wisdoms, tongue snaking out of old skin with every syllable. The swoop
of voice, the genderless truth of noise.

Raise up your gay voice, let it batter through work meetings, let your bent recitations bloom
in boardrooms like a pink Wilde orchid.

There’s Pride flags in Primark but queers overseas still burn. So let your poofy little voice
pierce as proof we exist.

Make every silly, frilly, say it with your hand spilly, gay word – gay. Let your Ts spill tea as
they kick up their heels when teased in your teeth.

Let pride catch in your palette, let your pout protrude in a glossy revolt. let that power loosen
your jaw.

For every batty boi, bumder, rejected for lacking a certain thunder in the dialogue, for ladies
who baritone, for the dual spirit pixies, the indigenous godlings.

Raise up your gay voice, loud enough to wake our high heeled elders, our angel lunged
ancestors, our twink haunted heavens in the crucible of your throat.

Raise up your gay voice because love is not felt in the heart, love is felt in the mouth.