AFTER ZOE LEONARD

I want a dyke for president.

These days, I want more than what can be given to me.
A dyke ran for president and got a poem. The poem
didn’t run. It was hand printed and passed around, used
and tossed out. A poem for a dyke running for president
went viral in 1992 on pulp paper and again in #feminist
Instagram posts in 2016. They wheat-pasted it on the
High Line thirty feet tall, reprinted it in museums, on
farmer’s market tote bags. Eileen Myles ran for
president and we only talk about the poem or the art. A
dyke ran for president and is still a poet with an attitude.
A dyke is always a poem or an art piece.

Emily Holland (she/they) is a lesbian writer living in Washington, DC. She received her MFA from American University, where she won the Myra Sklarew Award for outstanding thesis in poetry and was the Editor-In-Chief of FOLIO. Poems have appeared in publications including Black Warrior Review, Nat. Brut, Homology Lit, and Wussy, and in the chapbook Lineage (dancing girl press 2019). Her work has received support from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and Sundress Academy for the Arts. Currently, she is the Editor of Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry magazine published by The Writer’s Center.