Among the Leaves: Queer Male Poets
on the Midwestern Experience
Edited by Raymond Luczak
Squares & Rebels. 126 pages, $14.95 (paper)
When We Become Weavers: Queer Female Poets on the Midwestern Experience
Edited by Kate Lynn Hibbard
Squares & Rebels. 100 pages, $14.95 (paper)
A MIDWESTERN pig farmer once told me that animals don’t like an animal that’s different from the group. If one is a different color or acts funny, the others will harass it or run it off or kill it. Such is life even today in many parts of the Midwest for queer people of all sorts. They’re often forced away from home. They go in search of others like themselves, usually in urban areas, where they have to fight to survive without roots or support, as all homeless people do.