10 Beautiful Lesbian Poetry Works to Make Your Heart Flutter

Best poetry and book selections on lesbian love and equality.

By Adina Mazilu
10 Beautiful Lesbian Poetry Works to Make Your Heart Flutter

Poetry has been around for centuries and even though some of the most famous works talk about the love between a man and a woman, lesbian poetry and literature is also very popular, especially during these modern times. Queer people have existed since forever and a large number of poets have been part of this community, even if they didn’t necessarily make it public. However, if you search through some of their works, you will find clear ideas of homosexuality, love, and equality.

In this article, we have made a selection of ten of the most beautiful pieces of lesbian poetry to make your heart flutter. Read them with your beloved and draw inspiration. Remember that these works teach us that love is beautiful in all of its shapes and that we should be proud to have felt it as some point in our lives, regardless of whom it was pointed to.

10 Best Poetry and Books Selection

It’s worth noting that lesbian poetry is not the only form of written ar that we will be presenting to you in this article. We will also talk about some of the most interesting books that deal with this situation without any shame or guilt. Sappho began it all, back when words like “lesbian” or “sapphic” didn’t even exist in the dictionary. Some of the first explicitly-lesbian books that have been published in history contained lesbian poetry. In the 1800s’ China, poems about women who loved women were sung throughout the country, thanks to the poet Wu Tsao who was openly gay.

Later, during the 1900s’ France, poet Natalie Clifford Barney published her own lesbian poetry book, a thing that would later make her own father burn all the remaining stock of the title. The United States enjoyed the first published lesbian poetry book back in 1923, thanks to Elsa Gidlow. So, as you can see, lesbian poetry and books have a rich history and it would be a shame for it to remain hidden and forgotten. So, here is our selection of ten pieces of poetry that will definitely make you want to read more. Here we go!

Being In The Closet

1. FOR JORDANA by Eileen Myles

I really do feel like I am in some French movie, blam putting down a general cup of tea. The lights are thus and I squiggling then returning to my work quietly squeezed through the day that's captured some way separately not the squares of the cinema but envelopes of affection

spea spep spe

separation

I think writing is a desire not a form of it. It's feeling into space, tucked into language slipped into time, opened, felt. All this as a matter

of course of course

yet being here somehow, open

2. WHO SAID IT WAS SIMPLE by Audre Lorde

There are so many roots to the tree of anger   

that sometimes the branches shatter   

before they bear.

 

Sitting in Nedicks

the women rally before they march   

discussing the problematic girls   

they hire to make them free.

An almost white counterman passes a waiting brother to serve them first and the ladies neither notice nor reject the slighter pleasures of their slavery.   

But I who am bound by my mirror   

as well as my bed

see causes in color

as well as sex

 

and sit here wondering   

which I will survive   

all these liberations.

3. CUTE FOR A GIRL by Alix Olson

I told her she was cute
She said "you’re cute. for a girl
Look, I like you a lot, but I like to give head."
I lay down on my bed, I said: "try me."
She said "no, its a dick I’m after, darling," and she

Headed for the door
I said "if its a dick you’re after, darling, try my

Top dresser drawer."
"But I’ve got small hands," i said

"they never go limp when I f*ck
I got girl parts myself, so i know where’s good to suck"

She paused. i moved closer
She said "I’m not sure i buy it."

But her nipples perked, her pelvis jerked, she said
"i guess I’ll try it."

She stopped, dropped, rolled, paused, turned
And that night i learned
That skin is where this revolution gonna begin
Touching one woman at a time, showing there’s no crime

In feeling this good
God would be a dyke if she could find someone to hold her
Instead of holding her up as the dark image
In the church of my bedroom, she stopped, dropped, rolled, paused, turned, spread, said
"oh god."
"yeah, darlin", i said "anybody, anybody
Anybody can bring you
Closer to jesus.”

4. POEM FOR MY LOVE by June Jordan

How do we come to be here next to each other   

in the night

Where are the stars that show us to our love   

inevitable

Outside the leaves flame usual in darkness   

and the rain

falls cool and blessed on the holy flesh   

the black men waiting on the corner for   

a womanly mirage

I am amazed by peace

It is this possibility of you

asleep

and breathing in the quiet air

5. SLIP YOUR MIND by Andrea Gibson

I wanna be the thought that slips your mind
the thought that makes you come
to your senses

But I’m shy
so I’ll never tell you that
Instead I’ll say something like
“wanna hold hands sometime ?
wanna come over to my house and watch tv ?”
And I don’t have a tv
So you’d be left flipping the channels of me 
my breath on your neck like perfect reception
I’d tell you things like how I know
all your lies and deceptions have just been commercials
before the real show
And I’m a moody Star
(Andrea, that is the cheesiest line you’ve ever written)
I’m a moody star

But if you said glow 
I’d cut my soul into a million little pieces just to form constellations to light your way home
I’d hire little tiny gnomes 
to play the parts of dick Cheney and George Bush
so you could squish ‘em between your toes and feed ‘em to your cat
I’d love you like that
All political and shit

Like the distance between my body and yours 
is the same distance that stretches from shore to shore 
from right to left 
from rich to poor
and we could fuck our way to one brilliant communist union

And I know fuck is a bad word
but it sounds so good
Good like flipping off the preacher whenever he forgets that Eve was Adam’s teacher
‘Cause apples are fucking healthy, you patriarchial piece of shit

Now
Back to you
Your eyes are so 
well
I can’t remember if they are brown or blue
But you’re a really great dresser
I am too, but you are better
And I’m not looking for forever
I’m just looking for that one moment 
when your collar bone phones my mother at home and thanks her for giving birth to my breath
When the tides of your chest rise and fall on my shore
And I swear I can hear the sound of every name I was ever given and every life I lived before
Singing arias from the vocal chords of your pores

And I’m more than sure
that you’re all wrong for me
but all right would mean we have a lot in common
and I’m not attracted to common things
I prefer we sing our tears
so we can save the water to drown our fears

And there’s something like an ocean
in the motion of your fingertips
when they sweep your hair from your eyes
and you stare into mine
like you know I’m not an angel
But I used to be

So I was thinking
maybe you’d wanna hold hands sometime
maybe you’d wanna come over to my house
and watch tv

On Love and Equality

6. UNTITLED by Marilyn Hacker

You did say, need me less and I'll want you more.
I'm still shellshocked at needing anyone,
used to being used to it on my own.
It won't be me out on the tiles till four-
thirty, while you're in bed, willing the door
open with your need. You wanted her then,
more. Because you need to, I woke alone
in what's not yet our room, strewn, though, with your
guitar, shoes, notebook, socks, trousers enjambed
with mine. Half the world was sleeping it off
in every other bed under my roof.
I wish I had a roof over my bed
to pull down on my head when I feel damned
by wanting you so much it looks like need.

7. “Grl2grl” by Julie Anne Peters

As for book recommendations, this one is a collection of short stories based on queer teenagers that might give you the courage you need to come out of the closet. The topics here are intense and real, and it will definitely make you feel better knowing that so many people are going through what you’re also going. Definitely a lesbian must-read!

8. “Annie on my mind” by Nancy Garden

Amazon.com: Annie on My Mind (9780374400118): Nancy Garden: Books

Again, this is one of those books that started it all with young adult lesbian books. The story begins at the Metropolitan Museum where a spark occurs between two girls. Things escalate quickly from there and you will have to read it to find out the end.

9. THE TOUCH by Renee Vivien

The trees have kept some lingering sun in their branches,
Veiled like a woman, evoking another time,
The twilight passes, weeping. My fingers climb,
Trembling, provocative, the line of your haunches.
My ingenious fingers wait when they have found
The petal flesh beneath the robe they part.
How curious, complex, the touch, this subtle art–
As the dream of fragrance, the miracle of sound.
I follow slowly the graceful contours of your hips,
The curves of your shoulders, your neck, your unappeased breasts.
In your white voluptuousness, my desire rests,
Swooning, refusing itself the kisses of your lips.

10. WHEN I WAS STRAIGHT by Julie Marie Wade

Amazon.com: When I Was Straight (Body Language) (9781938334085): Julie Marie Wade: Books

I did not love women as I do now.
I loved them with my eyes closed, my back turned.
I loved them silent, & startled, & shy.

The world was a dreamless slumber party,
sleeping bags like straitjackets spread out on
the living room floor, my face pressed into a

slender pillow.

All night I woke to rain on the strangers’ windows.
No one remembered to leave a light on in the hall.
Someone’s father seemed always to be shaving.

When I stood up, I tried to tiptoe
around the sleeping bodies, their long hair
speckled with confetti, their faces blanched by the

porch-light moon.

I never knew exactly where the bathroom was.
I tried to wake the host girl to ask her, but she was
only one adrift in that sea of bodies. I was ashamed

to say they all looked the same to me, beautiful &
untouchable as stars. It would be years before
I learned to find anyone in the sumptuous,

terrifying dark.

 

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Summary

All in all, we can only hope that this selection of poetry pieces and some books that deal with the lesbian community and all it contains have helped you a lot. These works of art represent more than words because they offer courage and peace where there’s none. They are true statements of reality and equality that should be more popular among queer people and not only.

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