When QSaltLake publisher Michael Aaron posted on Facebook that they needed more poetry for their special Literary Issue, I dashed off a silly bit of doggerel and sent it in as a joke.--- And, wouldn't you know it? They published it, damn them!

Actually, I'm thrilled, and it's a real stroke of luck for me to be included among the genuine poets in the issue.

Of course, I'd always imagined my first time in a literary issue would be for something like short fiction. To tell the truth, my last foray into poetry was in high school when I took to cranking out reams of awful, torrid blank verse on a Smith Corona portable electric typewriter. I was big on tragic subjects such as unrequited love, the threat of nuclear war, why nobody understands me, etc. I stored those embarrassing pages for years in a beat-up old briefcase until sometime in my 20s when, in a fit of hot-faced shame, I ceremoniously burned them.

Now, I'm happy to say, my poetry career has been redeemed. Here, in all its glory, is my first genuinely literary work:

Ode to My Beard

Dame Fashion decreed that a fellow’s chin
Must be plucked and shaved and buzzed,
For there is nothing better than
A face devoid of fuzz.

But I prefer a face replete
With whiskers and vibrissae,
And yet I keep them trimmed and neat,
For I am still a sissy.

Brandon's Big Gay Blog