For years, whenever I visited my mom in Miami, she’d casually mention a friend she ran into now and then whom, she said, also had a child who’s a poet. I don’t actually identify much as a poet -- I’m much too in awe of real poets to do more than dip a toe in -- but I didn’t go out of my way to mention this. What I soon realized was that her friend’s offspring and I shared several attributes not often sources of pride in our families, and what she and her friend shared, I think, was a way of being relaxed and happy about their queer Cuban children and their writing -- in both cases, in a language different than theirs.Several years ago, long after we’d met -- though I don’t remember where we met, exactly, somewhere writerly or Cuban or both -- Richard Blanco and I were at a bar here in Chicago during an AWP event and he said, “You know your mom’s friendis my mom, right?”
When it comes to queer stuff, Republicans never cease to amaze and amuse me.
Winners
Did you think the National Rifle Association had reached its nadir when it suggested that, no matter the costs, we should put an armed guard in every school in the nation? Did you think it was a bit much that the group thought to inject itself in education policy by providing a whole gun training regimen for schools?
