Queer Earth by Jess X. Snow
"Sexual expression is permitted only within marriage, between man and woman, male and female. Anything else is an abnormality and is against nature." — Pope Shenouda III
You speak of nature as if you
invented it. Or gutted it & used
its bones to fashion a white castle,
to keep you safe from all the animals
you refuse to see.
Tonight, each grain of soil, each blade
of grass, each droplet of blood
is a time machine. Each cell
rewinds you four & a half billion
years back in history. We were once
genderless cells splitting our own bodies—
in two—now growing gills,
fins and feet. 65,000 queer
& trans species.
It's always mating season
on planet Earth: look
at the way leopard slugs
make love: upside down
from trees—two penises coiling
into orchids. A penetration
so mutual—it is worthy
of bioluminescence.
Look at the way bonobo monkeys
resolve conflict: queer polyamorous sex
in the morning, evening, and afternoon.
Look at the penguins mating for life,
warming the egg of another mother
with the heat between their bellies.
When an oyster produces a perfect pearl:
they transition from male to female.
For crustaceans, gender is a border
that does not exist. Do you hear
the orchestra of dolphins? Masturbating
against the seabed, penetrating
each other's blow holes, as if this human
history never began. If our love defies
the logic of your biology,
then what is queer pleasure if not
heavenly? Is this queer ocean
not the tidal waves roaring
within your bloodstream?
Is this queer Earth not the same
carbon that birthed your flesh?
To be queer, Earth, and alive
is to be hunted & marked wild.
A beast banished from heaven,
a bleached coral reef, a jungle clear-cut,
a planet domesticated like cattle, and butchered
in the hands of machines.
Yet, our queerness is an ancient
persistence. So tell me:
we be against nature.
& our bones will remember—
we've been queer
for 3.6 billion springs,
summers, falls & winters.
& even after
your infant empire
collapses into dust,
we will still be queer.
