Thursday, July 2, 2026: Jeffrey Bryant's "A poem that could be about Oakland -----"

Jeffrey Bryant is a Pushcart-nominated queer poet from Los Angeles. His work has appeared in the LA Weekly, LA Times, Poetic Diversity, New Verse News, Poetrysuperhighway.com, Synkroniciti, Quill and Echo, Tension Literary, Journal of the Plague Years, Coiled Serpent, Altadena Poetry Review, Shadowplay, Sparring with Beatnik Ghosts, Cholla Needles Literary Journal and Tender Hearts Club. He will appear in a forthcoming photography book of Los Angeles poet portraits from Moon Tide Press. His debut collection The Catacombs of Vanished Lovers is out now on Cherry Pie Press. @thecherrypiepress

A poem that could be about Oakland -----

I carry my favorite ocean 

with me on the plane, 

saltier than bags of nuts,  

and drink bottomless coca cola, 

its ice cubes 

dying in a vat of corn syrup. 

I moan

the safety lecture

back word for word

in my best Jayne Mansfield, 

aroused by the idea

of holding my ankles 

if the engines fail, 

taking another lilliputian bottle 

of Smirnoff,

lip syncing Sly Stone songs 

to the gremlin on the wing.

I land 

where a tavern called the White Horse

bucks the gender off my bones. 

I’ve slept 

with lots of cities

that rolled off the bed,

cities that lit my cigarettes,

cities that opened their robes

for inspection,

cities that painted tears 

under the eyes

of mural heroes, 

cities

morning after morning 

that are partly cloudy 

and totally queer. 

wherever this is,

whatever's in my coffee,

whatever poems are colliding 

in birdsong,

whatever you look like 

when you slide up behind me,

I could totally live here.

© Jeffrey Bryant