Notes for Further Study

Notes for Further Study  

By Christopher Salerno

You are a nobody  

until another man leaves  

a note under your wiper:  

I like your hair, clothes, car—call me!  

Late May, I brush pink  

Crepe Myrtle blossoms  

from the hood of my car.  

Again spring factors  

into our fever. Would this  

affair leave any room for error?  

What if I only want  

him to hum me a lullaby.  

To rest in the nets  

of our own preferences.  

I think of women  

I’ve loved who, near the end,  

made love to me solely  

for the endorphins. Praise  

be to those bodies lit  

with magic. I pulse  

my wipers, sweep away pollen  

from the windshield glass  

to allow the radar  

detector to detect. In the prim  

light of spring I drive  

home alone along the river’s  

tight curves where it bends  

like handwritten words.  

On the radio, a foreign love  

song some men sing to rise.

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About the Poem

There is something achingly familiar in this poem for many gay men, especially those who came of age learning to read desire in fragments, gestures, and coded moments. A note under a windshield wiper becomes more than flirtation—it becomes recognition. You are a nobody until another man notices you. That line carries the quiet loneliness of invisibility and the sudden electricity of being seen.

Christopher Salerno captures the strange mixture of hope, caution, lust, tenderness, and melancholy that can accompany even the smallest encounter. Spring, with its blossoms and pollen and feverish renewal, becomes the perfect backdrop for possibility. Yet beneath the flirtation is uncertainty. Is this about romance? Sex? Comfort? Escape? The speaker wonders if he only wants “him to hum me a lullaby,” which feels less like seduction and more like a longing to rest safely in another person’s presence.

I also love how physical the poem feels without ever becoming explicit: the pollen on the windshield, the pulse of the wipers, the river curving “like handwritten words.” Everything is movement and sensation. Even driving home alone carries emotional weight. Desire lingers in the air like spring humidity.

What strikes me most is the ending. A foreign love song “some men sing to rise.” The line feels both deeply personal and universal—a reminder that queer longing has always existed, often in coded forms, carried through songs, glances, poems, and half-understood signals. Sometimes survival itself has depended on learning how to hear those songs.

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About the Poem

“Notes for Further Study” is a contemporary lyric poem that explores queer desire, loneliness, intimacy, and emotional ambiguity through the lens of an ordinary moment. Christopher Salerno uses everyday imagery—cars, windshield wipers, spring blossoms, radio music—to create a meditation on what it means to be recognized and desired by another person.

The poem moves fluidly between memory, observation, and reflection. Its title suggests both emotional self-examination and the unfinished nature of human connection: these are “notes,” not conclusions. The poem’s emotional power comes from its restraint, allowing longing and vulnerability to emerge through image and implication rather than overt declaration.

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About the Author

Christopher Salerno is an American poet, editor, and educator known for poetry that often explores identity, desire, memory, and emotional vulnerability with lyrical precision. He is the author of several poetry collections, including The Man Grave and Sun & Urn. Salerno’s work frequently balances sensual imagery with introspective reflection, creating poems that feel both intimate and intellectually searching.

In addition to his poetry, Salerno has worked extensively in literary publishing and editing, helping support contemporary poetry and emerging writers through journals and literary organizations.

Thankfully, I am feeling better today. I still have a slight headache, and I barely slept last night, but I’m not in as much pain as when I woke up yesterday. I wish I could stay home another day, but I have things I have to do at work today.​

The Things I Love

The Things I Love 

By Scottie McKenzie Frasier

A butterfly dancing in the sunlight,
A bird singing to his mate,
The whispering pines,
The restless sea,
The gigantic mountains,
A stately tree,
The rain upon the roof,
The sun at early dawn,
A boy with rod and hook,
The babble of a shady brook,
A woman with her smiling babe,
A man whose eyes are kind and wise,
Youth that is eager and unafraid—
When all is said, I do love best
A little home where love abides,
And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest.

About the Poem

There is something deeply comforting about a poem like this. In a world that often feels loud, hurried, and divided, The Things I Love reminds us to slow down and notice the beauty around us. It is a poem built not on grand declarations or dramatic moments, but on quiet joys: sunlight, rain on the roof, birdsong, mountains, kindness, peace, and home.

What strikes me most is that the poem’s final conclusion is not about wealth, fame, or achievement. After listing all the wonders of nature and humanity, the poet says that what he loves best is “a little home where love abides.” That line feels especially meaningful today. Many of us spend our lives searching for acceptance, safety, and belonging. For LGBTQ+ people in particular, “home” is not always something we are automatically given. Sometimes we have to create it ourselves. Sometimes home is a partner, a group of friends, a chosen family, a quiet apartment, a beloved pet curled beside us, or simply a place where we can finally be ourselves without fear.

The poem also quietly celebrates gentleness. A “man whose eyes are kind and wise.” “Youth that is eager and unafraid.” “Kindness, peace, and rest.” These are not values our culture often prioritizes, yet they are among the things that truly sustain us. Kindness matters. Peace matters. Love matters.

As I read this poem, I think about the little things that make life meaningful: the first cup of coffee in the morning, sunlight through the window, the sound of rain at night, a cat insisting it is breakfast time, a conversation with someone who understands you, and the comfort of knowing there is a place where you belong. Those are the things that endure long after the noise of the world fades away.

The Things I Love is a simple lyric poem that celebrates the beauty of everyday life and the comfort found in love, kindness, and home. Rather than focusing on dramatic emotion, the poem gently catalogs moments from nature and ordinary human experience before arriving at its central truth: that peace and love shared in a home are among life’s greatest blessings.

Its quiet sincerity and accessible imagery give the poem a timeless, reflective quality.

About the Poet

Scottie McKenzie Frasier, born on September 7, 1884, in Talladega, Alabama, was a poet, editor, and lecturer. As a suffrage activist, she cofounded the Dothan Equal Suffrage Association in 1912. McKenzie Frasier authored several poetry collections, including Things that Are Mine (Steen Hinrichsen, 1922) and Fagot of Fancy* (Progressive Publishers, 1920). She died on November 21, 1964.

* The title Fagot of Fancy by Scottie McKenzie Frasier is using the older spelling “fagot,” which in this context does not carry the modern slur meaning. Instead, it comes from the older English and French word meaning “a bundle of sticks” or “a bundle gathered together.”  

The word fancy in early twentieth-century literary language often referred to imagination, poetic thought, whimsy, or creative inspiration—not merely liking something.  

In other words, Fagot of Fancy is a poetic, somewhat old-fashioned title suggesting a gathered bundle of imaginative pieces, much like tying together small branches into one bundle. It would have sounded literary and evocative in 1920 when the collection was published.  

Ironically, because the word later evolved into a derogatory slang term in the twentieth century, modern readers often do a double take when they encounter the title today. But in Frasier’s era, the title would have been understood in its older, literary sense.

Happiness / La felicidad

Happiness (La felicidad)

By Manuel Acuña

English Translation

A blue sky full of stars
shining in immensity;
a bird in love
singing in the forest;
for atmosphere the aromas
of the garden and the orange blossom;
next to us the water
sprouting from the spring
our hearts close,
our lips much more,
you rising to heaven
and me following you there—
that is love, my life,
That is happiness! …

Cross with the same wings
the worlds of the ideal;
to drain all the joys,
and all the haste that is good;
from dreams and happiness
back to reality,
waking up among the flowers
of a spring lawn;
both of us looking at each other,
the two of us kissing some more,
that is love, my life,
That is happiness …!

Original Spanish

Un cielo azul de estrellas
brillando en la inmensidad;
un pájaro enamorado
cantando en el florestal;
por ambiente los aromas
del jardín y el azahar;
junto a nosotros el agua
brotando del manantial
nuestros corazones cerca,
nuestros labios mucho más,
tú levantándote al cielo
y yo siguiéndote allá,
ese es el amor mi vida,
¡Esa es la felicidad!…

Cruza con las mismas alas
los mundos de lo ideal;
apurar todos los goces,
y todo el bien apurar;
de lo sueños y la dicha
volver a la realidad,
despertando entre las flores
de un césped primaveral;
los dos mirándonos mucho,
los dos besándonos más,
ese es el amor, mi vida,
¡Esa es la felicidad…!

About the Poem

Today is Cinco de Mayo—a day that, in the United States, often takes on a life of its own. While it is frequently mistaken for Mexico’s Independence Day (which is actually celebrated on September 16), Cinco de Mayo commemorates the Mexican victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla. In Mexico, it is a relatively modest holiday, but here it has become a broader celebration of Mexican culture.

So today, I wanted to turn—not to the noise of celebration—but to something quieter and more enduring: poetry. Specifically, the work of Manuel Acuña, whose words capture a simple, luminous vision of love and happiness.

There’s something striking about how simple this poem is—and how complete it feels.

Acuña doesn’t describe wealth, success, or achievement. There’s no mention of status, ambition, or even permanence. Instead, happiness is found in a moment: a sky, a bird, the scent of orange blossoms, water from a spring, two people close enough that their hearts—and then their lips—follow each other.

It’s deeply sensory, almost immersive. You can feel the air, smell the garden, hear the bird. And in the middle of it all, love isn’t something abstract or distant—it’s immediate, physical, and shared.

What I find most compelling is the second half of the poem. After soaring through “the worlds of the ideal,” the speaker returns to reality—not with disappointment, but with joy. They wake up among flowers, still together, still looking at each other, still kissing.

Happiness, then, is not escape. It’s not found in leaving the world behind. It’s found in returning to it—with someone beside you.

There’s also a quiet universality here. Though written in 19th-century Mexico, the poem transcends time and place. Anyone who has loved—truly loved—recognizes this vision: the feeling that, for a moment, the world narrows to just two people and expands at the same time.

On a day like today, when celebration can sometimes feel loud or commercial, this poem offers something gentler. It reminds us that happiness is often not in the spectacle, but in the stillness—in shared moments that feel, however briefly, like eternity.

“La felicidad” is a lyric poem that reflects the Romantic sensibilities of its time—lush imagery, emotional sincerity, and an idealized vision of love. The natural world plays a central role, serving as both setting and metaphor: the sky, the bird, the garden, and the spring all mirror the vitality and purity of the lovers’ connection.

The poem also moves fluidly between dream and reality. The speaker imagines soaring through “the worlds of the ideal,” yet ultimately grounds happiness in lived experience—waking, seeing, touching, kissing. This duality reflects a broader Romantic tension between aspiration and reality, suggesting that true happiness lies not in choosing one over the other, but in holding both together.

Its refrain—“ese es el amor, mi vida, ¡Esa es la felicidad!”—anchors the poem emotionally, reinforcing the idea that love, in its simplest and most immediate form, is the essence of happiness.

About the Poet

Manuel Acuña (1849–1873) was a Mexican poet and playwright associated with the Romantic movement. Born in Saltillo, he studied medicine in Mexico City, where he became part of a literary circle that included some of the most prominent writers of his time.

Though his life was tragically short—he died at just 24—Acuña left behind a body of work marked by emotional intensity, lyrical beauty, and a deep exploration of love, longing, and existential reflection. He is perhaps best known for his poem Nocturno a Rosario, a deeply personal and melancholic work.

“La felicidad,” by contrast, shows a different side of his voice—one that embraces joy, intimacy, and the quiet completeness of love. Even within his brief life, Acuña captured both the heights of happiness and the depths of human feeling, which is part of what continues to make his poetry resonate today.

I Am Not I

I Am Not I

by Juan Ramón Jiménez

I am not I.
                I am this one
walking beside me whom I do not see,
whom at times I manage to visit,
and whom at other times I forget;
the one who remains silent when I talk,
the one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
the one who takes a walk where I am not,
the one who will remain standing when I die.

Today is Poem in Your Pocket Day, a celebration that encourages people to carry a poem with them—literally in a pocket, a wallet, or on a phone—and share it with others throughout the day. It’s a simple idea, but a powerful one: that poetry is not meant to sit quietly on a shelf, but to travel with us, to meet us where we are, and perhaps to say something we didn’t know we needed to hear.

When I started thinking about what poem I wanted to carry today, I realized I wanted something about finding oneself. Not in the grand, dramatic sense, but in the quieter, more honest way that happens over time—through reflection, contradiction, and those moments when we catch a glimpse of who we really are.

That’s what led me to this poem.

Jiménez writes of a self that is both present and just out of reach—a companion we walk beside but do not fully know. It’s a haunting idea, but also a comforting one. There is a part of us that is patient, that forgives, that waits for us to catch up to it. A self that is perhaps truer than the one we show to the world.

I think many of us, especially those of us who have had to navigate questions of identity, faith, or belonging, know this feeling well. There is the self we’ve been told to be, the self we’ve tried to be, and somewhere alongside us, the self we are becoming.

Poetry has a way of naming that space.

If I were to carry a poem in my pocket today, it would be this one—not because it gives me answers, but because it reminds me that the search itself is part of the journey. That perhaps finding oneself is not about arriving somewhere new, but about recognizing the one who has been walking beside us all along.

About the Poem

“I Am Not I” is a brief but deeply philosophical meditation on identity. In just a few lines, Jiménez presents the self as divided—one part visible and active, the other quiet, observant, and enduring.

The poem resists a fixed definition of identity. Instead, it suggests that who we are is layered:

• the outward self that speaks and acts
• the inward self that watches, forgives, and persists

The final line—“the one who will remain standing when I die”—adds a spiritual dimension, hinting at a self that transcends the physical or temporal. Whether read psychologically, philosophically, or spiritually, the poem invites us to consider that our truest self may not always be the one we immediately recognize.

Its brevity is part of its power. Like the best “pocket poems,” it can be read in a moment but linger in the mind far longer.

About the Poet

Juan Ramón Jiménez (1881–1958) was a Spanish poet and one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956 for his lyrical poetry, which is known for its clarity, emotional depth, and pursuit of what he called “pure poetry.”

Jiménez’s work often explores themes of beauty, memory, and the inner life. His writing evolved over time from richly ornamented early poems to a more stripped-down, essential style—seeking precision and truth in language.

He is perhaps best known for Platero y yo, a poetic prose work beloved for its tenderness and reflection on life and loss. Though widely read, especially in the Spanish-speaking world, many of his shorter lyrical poems—like “I Am Not I”—continue to resonate for their quiet insight into the human experience.

What poem would you carry in your pocket today?

The Hug

The Hug
By Thom Gunn

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined

    Half of the night with our old friend

        Who’d showed us in the end

    To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.

        Already I lay snug,

And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,

        Suddenly, from behind,

In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:

        Your instep to my heel,

    My shoulder-blades against your chest.

    It was not sex, but I could feel

    The whole strength of your body set,

           Or braced, to mine,

        And locking me to you

    As if we were still twenty-two

    When our grand passion had not yet

        Become familial.

    My quick sleep had deleted all

    Of intervening time and place.

        I only knew

The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.

About the Poem

Last night I had a dream about the guy I had a crush on in high school. In the dream, he had brought his son to visit my university because the kid wanted to attend a military academy that would accept him for being gay. My old crush had not known I worked there and was on an admissions tour that included a short visit to the museum. I happened to be walking through the museum when I saw him and immediately recognized him. I’ve changed a lot since high school but he barely had. I called his name and he turned around. At first he didn’t recognize me and I told him who I was. He was so happy to see me that he hugged me. That’s when I woke up. I woke up very aroused and it took me a bit to fall back asleep, but even though it was not an erotic dream, being in his arms was enough to arouse me. Anyway, it made me remember Thom Gunn’s poem “The Hug” even though the narrative of the poem is nothing like my dream.

What Gunn captures so beautifully here—and what my dream unexpectedly echoed—is the quiet power of physical closeness that exists outside of overt sexuality. The poem insists, almost defensively, “It was not sex,” and yet the intimacy it describes is unmistakably charged. The body remembers what the mind might try to categorize differently. A simple embrace becomes a kind of time machine, collapsing years into a single moment of contact.

That’s what struck me most when I woke up: not desire in any explicit sense, but the memory of being held—of being known physically, instinctively, without explanation. Gunn’s speaker experiences the same phenomenon. Sleep erases “intervening time and place,” and in that suspended moment, the past returns not as memory but as sensation. The body pressed against another body becomes a language of its own, one that speaks of history, affection, and perhaps even a love that has changed shape but not disappeared.

There’s something profoundly human—and quietly queer—about that. So often, queer intimacy has had to exist in these in-between spaces, where touch carries meanings that words cannot safely express. A hug becomes not just comfort, but recognition. Not just familiarity, but longing. Not just presence, but history.

And maybe that’s why the poem lingers. It reminds us that intimacy isn’t always loud or dramatic. Sometimes, it’s as simple—and as overwhelming—as waking up in someone’s arms.

One of the most striking tensions in “The Hug” lies in the line, “It was not sex, but…” Why does Gunn feel the need to make that distinction—and what does it reveal about the nature of intimacy in the poem?

On the surface, the poem draws a boundary between physical affection and sexual activity. However, everything that follows that line complicates the distinction. The speaker is acutely aware of the other man’s body: its strength, its positioning, the way it “locks” them together. The embrace is described in deeply physical, almost sensual terms, suggesting that the experience exists on a spectrum rather than within a strict category.

This raises an important question: is Gunn diminishing the eroticism of the moment, or is he expanding our understanding of what intimacy can be? The hug becomes a space where emotional history, bodily memory, and desire converge—without needing to resolve into explicit sexuality. In doing so, the poem challenges the reader to reconsider the boundaries we place on physical connection.

Ultimately, “The Hug” suggests that intimacy is not defined solely by sexual acts, but by presence, memory, and the profound recognition of another body against one’s own.

About the Poet

Thom Gunn (1929–2004) was an Anglo-American poet known for his precise language, formal control, and evolving thematic interests. Born in England, he later moved to the United States, where he became associated with the San Francisco literary scene.

Gunn’s early work was often formal and restrained, but over time, his poetry grew more experimental and personal, particularly as he began to write more openly about gay life and relationships. His work frequently explores themes of identity, physicality, desire, and the tension between control and freedom.

In later collections, especially those written during the AIDS crisis, Gunn’s poetry took on a deeply emotional and elegiac tone, reflecting both personal loss and broader communal grief. “The Hug,” while quieter and more intimate than some of his other works, reflects his enduring interest in the body—not just as a site of desire, but as a vessel of memory, connection, and meaning.