NOVEMBER MOURNING

If you look, you’ll see buds
on the Cottonwood trees.
Red, sticky, ready to over
winter. Roots sunk deep
in the waterside earth.
Above, a sky gray and soft
as breath let go, still 
a moment, then in. It appears 
to move like that, shape
shifting. A fine clear puddle 
shines in a depression of leaves
golden and newly heart shaped.
Nothing is as it seems. 

WORLD OF MEN

Shoot down whatever’s in the sky. 
– Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

The sky belongs to no one,
no country. Tell that to the jets
silencing the waves’ constant 
chatter. I want to wade in and drink
from the cold hard breast of the world.

On the six-month anniversary 
of my book with poems for the dead
murdered for their gender, I posted 
on Facebook a celebration and reckoning.
Six men I do not know posted 
the laughing emoji. One called me 
groomer because I elegized their deaths.

Overhead, the Navy flies its fighter jets 
the kind Tom Cruise flew in Top Gun.
Little man. Big machine. Mergansers
bob for fish. The dog carries back a seagull
skeleton and wing feather spine in her mouth.
Something already killed it, left these bones 
behind. Waves roll and break. Roll and break.
In the moment I forget the sound of war 
relieved by the unstoppable, a kind of peace.

I wish no one harm. Still, I’m angry this paradise, 
home to Coastal Salish before white explorers, 
has been taken over by men of war practicing
to bomb another civilization back to the Stone Age. 
Am I being simplistic? Even me, sitting here
thinking this. What am I but war? I pile flat rocks 
from the wrack line into meaning: I was here 
grieving every stolen life.

SURVEY: THIRTY, 18 AND UNDER

            A found poem from a Queer youth exhibit

We asked and they said
            what is beautiful
            what is painful
            what they need.

Can we listen, give more
            acceptance, gentleness,
            love; more gay, more Pride
            flags and reassurance?

Can we normalize public Queerness? 
            Banish rednecks, 
            judgement, hate, harm.

Because everything is fab.
            The trees talk to me.
            Being Queer is beautiful.
            Uncertainty is terrifying.
            I am not dead.
            I’m Queer without fear.

Poet’s Statement

On “November Mourning”

Like many of us, I tend to write from what is arising within me and without. This poem is a good reflection of that, capturing my heartbreak on the day after the election, and at the same time the beauty in nature that speaks to my feelings. Everything is changing, and nothing is as it seems.

On “World of Men”

Living in the US at this particular time—or really anytime since colonization—means living in a paradox. We are all impacted by violence against any of us. Though Whidbey Island is one of my favorite places to visit on the coast, far from my high desert home, its history is complicated, and its landscape has been changed generation after generation including the location of a naval air base. There’s a kind of hypermasculinity that continues to evince itself, no matter where I go. 

On “Survey: Thirty, 18 and Under”

I taught a poetry workshop for non-binary, trans identified youth in my town as part of a Pride exhibit exploring what it’s like to be Queer Out Here in rural Washington. Along with the young writers, I also wrote some ekphrastic poems from the exhibit, and this is one of them. As a late identifying non-binary, trans masculine person, I was moved to read what our young folx had to say and find where the joy lives amongst the fear. 

On “A Letter from History”

I enjoy writing documentary poetry, particularly employing erasure. This piece I wrote as a kind of spell, which clearly didn’t work! So I’m happy the poem has found a home and an appreciative audience.  

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (they/them) is the author of five collections of poetry including A Brief History of My Sex Life, forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books in January of 2026, and Transitory (2023), from BOA Editions, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry in 2024. They are a teaching artist in schools and libraries as well as working with private students individually and in groups. A Queer elder, they live in rural northcentral Washington on unceded Methow land.