REUBEN GELLEY NEWMAN
Reuben Gelley Newman is the author of Feedback Harmonies (Seven Kitchens Press), a chapbook on Arthur Russell. His poems are available or forthcoming in Salamander, The Fairy Tale Review, South Dakota Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. A Co-Editor at Couplet Poetry, you can find him on social media @joustingsnail and in real life in New York City.
Paint me: make me different.
Make me cry & make me laugh.
I don’t care what we turn out to be.
I’ve been thinking about queer loneliness, and I think, as a poet, as someone looking for love, I often desire the imaginary. I find that in poems. That’s not something new for artists: we often desire the imaginary and the real simultaneously, I think, and the poem can navigate that space in between. I don’t know how we discover ourselves; maybe we’re constantly doing so. I want to fall in love and to fall out of love, to be in love only with myself. I want to become closer to the lover and to break up with them. I want to gain control and lose it.
December 10, 2023