Cory Quinn's poetry centers around love, bodies, and complex human relationships. His favorite topics to write about are queer and trans feelings, psychological theories/ paradoxes, and physical intimacy. Cory works both in free verse and established poetic forms, his favorites being the sestina, the duplex, and the contemporary sonnet. His poetic inspirations are Savannah Brown, Ada Limon, Dorothy Chan, and Mary Oliver. Featured here is a selection of Cory's favorite poems, published and unpublished.
-Untitled (1985), Keith Haring
what happens at any given moment;
a human loses 90 million cells,
replicates them, countlessly dividing /
synapses crackling with thought / fingernails,
hair follicles, eyelashes all growing /
lungs alive, breathing air / the heart pumps one
gallon of blood every minute / red blood
cells and their millions of oxygen
particles travel thousands of miles /
the average person blinks their eyes twelve times/
taking in millions of views / and here
we are, existing on earth together.
humanity dances, abstract, flailing,
blind eyes to awkward knees. to nestle,
curling into each other’s beating chests
is to be home. our hearts are swollen, cramped
with purpose; we once told each other we
were born into this world to love, where have
these souls wandered? we are more than line art
brushed across canvas, sealed in turpentine.
weigh the burden of perception—of care.
when we laugh, our cheeks flush red with roses;
when we cry, our tears taste warm with fresh salt;
morning light catches our pupils off guard;
even the slightest touch can give goosebumps;
palms trace like subway maps, all blemishes
chalk-drawn masterpieces to admire;
do not fear the love you wield! together, we
hold the world. our cradling, folding hands—
infectious love for the public domain.
open arms foster the swelling yellow
curiosity, shining bright, morning
sun. every day is a new dance. movement
through art spans beyond language / beyond word /
beyond sound. see me, enveloped by you:
open your eyes, extend those beautiful hands.
i will let you hold me.
-After Jericho Brown
In bed, I am neither man nor woman;
I am bodied, bottom growth in lace
groaning against a bottom, laced-up body
and a bed frame, holding you tenderly.
Like a bed frame, I hold you tenderly
not tentative. You taste sweet like bitters—
still tentative, it’s sweet to see you bitter.
To label me is to limit me.
I told you “don’t label me, you’ll limit me.”
Watch beads of sweat break onto my belly
watch us love, soft-dom sweats on my belly.
I coax you to the edge, feeling your heat
our souls have no edge—savoring queer heat.
In bed, I am neither man nor woman.
laps tenderly at tourist ankles.
Tranquil change from Unforgiving
Ocean, she is gentle, beckons softly her
medical bath. The water is warm,
ground beneath only sand. Pitch-black
lake rests hip-level, herbs and oily
film bending around wading women’s
curves. Figures contrasting setting
lavender sky. A girl glides dainty hands
across the surface—fingertips eddying
like pond-skaters. In nature’s stillness,
she washes the lingering wisps of
womanhood—the tea-stained water—
wringing her hair and legs of who
she once was to pass onto those bathing
tomorrow morning. In their emergence,
there is no mythical transformation
only a young man, soul washed anew,
in need of a dry towel.
The night you broke things off again, I dreamt we married.
you stood before me on a gloomy beach, dressed
in wrinkled linen and ornate wicker loafers. I, to your right,
draped in satin from shoulder to shin, billowing from
the neck down. Beneath us, sand enveloped cold feet. We were alone.
I know you would’ve hated it yes, you—the one
so adamant on the courthouse. You aren’t the only one
upset by the spectacle; despite my dreaming, I wasn’t married
to the day either. Neither of us could smile, let alone
kiss. You sensed it wasn’t right when waves addressed
us by lapping at our ankles, rising. As I awoke from
the haze, your whispers echoed: Next time we’ll get it right.
Back in the Now, you don’t seem to care what is right.
You sport sweaters knitted in lackluster improvement, but I am the one
on the clothesline, clipped and hanging like your delicates. From
up above with tendons numb how I bend, getting married
to the idea of hibernation in your absence dressed
in the damp washing you put off for later. I can wait alone.
Boiling tears hiss and streak as I watch you try to live alone;
free to fancy / to flirt / to fuck / to feel it out, that is your right.
Keep the door cracked, you will slink your way back, dressed
in innocence—I miss you, I love you, I know you are my one
and only. Clinging to clothes-pinned hopes, you let me marry
into your fantasy of success in solitude. You / I keep me / you from
anything / everything. two months off-and-on, you commit to form;
spoon my weeping mess pitch foolproof plan of alone,
vow indeterminant connection so I’ll stay married
to you even in your parting. Now I think I have it right—
we’ll have sex again tonight, but you’re the only one
who gets to finish. Me? I’ll get dressed
in the early morning dark, still sucking on a stale night undressed,
bare beneath cheap sheets. I cannot dream in your twin bed, restless from
thought hesitations—the let’s talk tomorrow’s. Once I manage one
dip back into subconscious I’m stuck on a flooded beach alone.
Water bouncing chin high, I’m left drowning in what isn’t right—
cold, airless lungs cramp, and all I can do is think of when we married.
(Afterthought:
I dreaded being the one to write about a breakup, but dressed
in dream satin, married to you, I couldn’t keep from lamenting.
Alone in my bed, I’ll come to accept you were right to leave.)
A woman’s purpose is Birthing™.
Bodies built to break bearing sweet life.
Children, the pinnacle of impetus, the optimal
Deliverance to this world: my ultimate girl’s trip.
Every time I think between my legs I ache for dispatch,
Fleeing the precedent splitting from the torso down
Getting away from it all. The best they can do:
Halt inner workings, glazing over gears,
Intrauterine tampering. Adult choices for my adult body.
Jelly-legged in the clinic, bare-ass lying in wait
Knuckles a ghostly white— too late for a pull-out.
Lubed up, I want nothing more than to hide behind
Mother’s skirt as I did when I was a girl. “You go, girl!”
No going back now. Gyno spreads silky shivering thighs
Opens me up to the medical world, speculum deflowering with tools
Poking and prodding into the soft pear flesh of my inner woman.
Quick in-and-out; doc hushes frantic whimpers with rubber gloves.
Reality clamps like a white-hot bullet, then the tea kettle
Scream guttural—hurting as no hurt has before. My frame
Torn asunder the raw wounded doe. Heaving and buckling,
Uterus moans in betrayal, her one purpose blinded.
Vaguely fucked in the doctor’s office by Scissorhands and tweezers,
What commentary can be scrounged between sobs? Empowerment?
Xerosis could be treated with the limp-dick pain control provided.
Yawp from the car window self-inflicted severing from bod—
Zeroing out biological roots, how good does it feel to be liberated?
Adult choices for my adult body.
Biology is beautifully painful—how pretty, the femme figure
Controlled by birth not the other way around.
Daughters, mothers, and others with painfully beautiful experiences
Empowerment! Please, tell me about empowerment. Doctors and Gynos
Fingered me bloody till ovaries quaked and handed me a pink
“Girl Power” pad on my way out the door. Now I text some man
His grace period ‘till the next leg-spreading orgasm I’ll fake / he won’t know why
I sob the next time he puts it in / why I’m “tighter” than last time /
Just for a moment, I swear he was the nurse who congratulated me, my
Knackered mess sprawled about, melting off the unforgiving table.
Life post-operation, a three-month death march. Remember
Motherhood that should have been. How destined the need
Nurture—not need but socialized yearning devilishly personified,
Overlooked so easily. From the barest bones of womanhood
Pain is present. To give / to block new life— a sister torture.
Quiet fine print etched into female bonds: you must be broken.
Shame just for feeling / you will hurt, but it will never be priority.
These days, what is stuck in my cervix sits dulled,
Unsure whether to keep fighting wheezing organs or
Value the pulsing center of such fervent animosity.
Wilted and weak pink lady apple, peeled and cored—
Xyster rasping—any remaining “Girl Power” only
Young yearning fantasy. I do not feel empowered, do you?
Zenith of medical advance / beautiful bodies still breaking.
Bleeding scabs burrow their crowns of thorns,
spreading like sick. Insects fester deep
beneath scalp, crickets chirping restlessly.
This conscience wants me dead, pleading release /
a sigh / a peace. I scrounge for holy bread,
body, that flaking flesh—specks are mountains
felt by finger-pad grooves. Harrow my earth /
break new ground / excavate crimson oil /
sleep-bleed with pillowcases stained, somehow
champion of this massacre. Look closer:
ugly open wounds throbbing thinly veiled
by unwashed hair. Gritty greasy filth.
With every skin cell scraped from my frame
someone quotes the hidden scripture: I hate you.
Tug heavy head from its neck, cradling,
praying—knees planted into floorboards.
Regret creases over me, ever so
dense. Promises to heal, never enough.
Too little / too late / too bruised to improve,
doomed—a sappy apple dripping ooze down
into torn palms littered with blisters, frayed
fringes of fingernails. This sinful vice
beloved burden, my soul is sold
to unholy cope—primal blood pact
sealed and resealed with each new infected
follicle. Scabs like communion wafers,
boulders ripped from my crown, each crater holds
promise laced with futility: Lord,
help me learn to heal myself once again.
Tires beat like drums down the timeworn road.
Old country highway, plainly acquainted
with vehicular demise— no fucks,
no fawning, no funeral. To the right,
our bald eagle picks hungrily through raw
red meat— the last semblance of doe, a deer
crumpled into asphalt. Won’t someone pity
the simple thing? Blinded by false promise—
warmth on a cold night. Couldn’t know better.
Today, our eagle feasts, spoiled and rich.
Wielding holy aegis, he is quick to consume,
to conquer—the road his stage for hasty
decay. Won’t someone bring justice to the
damn thing? Something greater than blind-eye cars.
Athens’ ship of Theseus is
a vessel tossed about history’s course, a matter
of constitution versus identity. My
view has stood simplistic: what is whole is whole
regardless of the work done to the body
of the craft. Is it ever that simple, though? We
imagine the physicality of boards ripped up, we
recount reconstruction’s process as if the ship is
breathing through its bolted seams, a living body
set to swim through each year’s pilgrimage. A matter
of human struggles painted upon hardwood, my
sympathy is easily misplaced, falling down this rabbit hole.
Looking between ship and man, how do we quantify “whole”?
If I were to follow in the ripples of the boat, how would we
react? Let me pry up my oak-paneled chest, wash squid ink oil off my
face and see how far into the affair those around begin to mourn. Is
this person meant to form only through perception—my matter
a disappearing act, dwindling with each changing part? Is my body
no longer the True and Real body
when I account for repairs? Can anyone strive for wholeness
if each tweak to transition is mapped as a matter
of dispatch from who we used to be? No longer the initial self, we
follow in the prophecy of the ancient ship. Our fate is
debated by force, and in the eyes of the world, what is left of me to be mine?
My
body
is
whole.
In a stormy sea of bigotry, we
steer ourselves true, knowing what matters.
Philosophers scrutinize technicalities on the matter
of identity as if the vessel doesn’t catch the wind without a name. My
consciousness ebbs and flows through an everchanging form,
we will note repairs and updates to my body
one day as celebration rather than puzzles to criticize- a whole
new persistence of identity in spite of constitution; this is what our future is.
(Afterthought:
Salty waves crash against the body of my ship; we could count the years
spent constructing, repairs, and manipulating matter, but regardless
of any change, the craft is destined to end up, in its own way, whole.)
the small creature sits there in the cold, surrounding snowfall
dense enough to suffocate strange silhouettes. this is a thing
called safety; self-imposed isolation so far out of harm’s reach
it wraps ‘round the other side- stretching, warping,
until it’s far less secure than what was first promised.
so the poor thing finds its way through the flurries to a group,
met with momentary heat, a fleeting sense of connection
only for connection to become penetration- oozing red from
neighboring spikes leaving the ground stained in cherry pain,
and once again they are driven away to the frigid landscape.
(yes it’s all true. as the story goes,
two hedgehogs find each other amid the storm.
they huddle for warmth but are cut by each other’s
spines. in the pursuit of their safety, they avoid
the intimacy of comfort, calling out into the winds-
I don't want to hurt you.)
they say it may be impossible to be close without mutual harm,
doomed to live in fear of hurt- causing and bearing it in return
but I am here to love and be loved, even if it hurts.
together, we are learning how to share warmth
how to feel for balance without puncturing flesh.
I will hold your face in my hands- trace from eyebrow to jawline
and feel your palms resting on my soft back.
we will fall asleep in the same bed and learn the word peace.
our spines can learn to lay flat, a mutual comfort to rewrite that
notion the philosophers first feared.
-After Savannah Brown
if you can imagine a view from the tallest tree.
stacking smattered textures juniper mists
the light lax and warm filtered through the leaves
hummings of fresh green life each atom blinking
and everything embraced. a moment passes. then the next.
acknowledge the weight on the branch without it snapping.
reject the tempest of cognition the dew dropped epochs
revert to a rainforest stupor, once again able to see the world
just you. existing with what we have.
from above and below how the world turns without the bending.
surrounded by the peace of an ecosystem not of your design
I turn my focus to you; together we will ponder
the futile longing of elsewhere recognize the envy of those
who do not bow the grass with their footsteps remembering
each organism we wish we could be and all the times
you’ve said that monkeys are like us humans-
but ‘not tied down by the rules of society’
free to exist with the forest, be a part of it, and sometimes
i worry that consciousness makes me a biased observer.
/ every time i step the ground shakes with change
/ i feel selfishness in wishing to be a simple thing
/ and i'm wondering if it could ever be possible
to enter a forest without stepping on the moss or picking up
the leeches just to revert to a phase of primates like us
so if you can imagine a view from the tallest tree.
Gathered around the psyche swarming the mind is everything you
Ought to keep track of; count the catches, follow the figures,
Recall it all with accuracy sharpened- fulfill the effort so futile
It’s industry / institution / inattentional blindness. they say
Looking isn't the same as seeing, as if we are unaware. the truth is we
Lose the moment we care. there’s always a loop we’re too dumb to catch
Always a trick we should’ve known. “I’m paying attention, I promise!”
“but did you see the gorilla?”
dragonflies/ glass beads / birthday candles lit on a gluten-free cake
/ dandelions picked by little girls in pink rain boots / finger-smudged
drawings on fogged-up bus windows/ that word stardust.
I told myself I wouldn’t write about you. I’ve shrugged indifference
for months, but continue to collect passing moments of you, each piece a
part of a museum still tucked into the cushions of my heart still dear,
dusted from cobwebs. kept here is everything I wish I could forget;
savored late-night messages/ tacky inside jokes/
that way you described me in a poem written after our first interaction:
‘oh pretty thing, they know nothing of how to have you,
but know less of what to do when you’re gone.’
can I muster the will to quit you? this is the problem. I move out
into the sun but still see your smile refracted in the rainbow light of
stained glass wind chimes, your laugh nestled in summer’s wildflowers.
I don’t want to yearn. I don’t need you but I hear my voice echo
won’t you stay? will there ever be something of us again?
what a spectacle, holding up your mirrorball in the spotlight, rose-tinted
lenses long broken- still desperate to press the frames against my
burning face. these days it seems everyone’s moved on but me.
still obsessive / possessive chasing that childish dream of
best friends forever. a poet better than you once said:
‘if the words are profound let me let them be and let me let them go’
but I cannot let go. your embroidered flowers mark my soul on your
denim jacket/ I glued your aura in a collage of scrapbook pages/ and oh,
I can still hear which songs on my playlists you gave to me. it didn’t end
with a bang. we snuffed out suddenly but subtly like matchsticks struck
in the wind- stardust smoke still twisting in my lungs
stifling/ choking. I told myself I wouldn’t write about you like this.
I find too often that fear keeps me from beauty.
return to windy city nights after some vague hiatus,
a welcome home to shaky suburban bones.
the view from twelve stories up is staggering to start,
shattering sights at suffocating heights
so I let weary eyes adjust and greet an old friend.
Chicago, you envelop me in your radiance once again,
I wrote a love letter to you once as a child and prayed
that nights like these wouldn't warp with age.
when we reunite, I see the city I first loved as a girl
standing just as tall, beaming just as bright for a new man
now fixed at the window speaking to sirens in the night.
crops of buildings and light span a distance so vast
they cut themselves off in the friday night fog,
streets muted in the cover of darkness but still breathing.
dazzled by the grand array but rendered scared of its scale
I wish to savor the image as spectator over participant,
keeping sights a distanced observation- floors above it all.
how many windows are awake tonight?
how many heads will the rain fall on?
down the street, mischievous youths scamper
in search of dry footing, high on that nightlife
dipping around corners with hands canopied above heads.
I accidentally look in on a young couple having sex–
bodies are warm in the light, but perhaps my glasses
smudge judgment in lingering water stains.
in the midst of the grand array: rain falling in a streetlight.
in such a busy scene, who takes the time
to paint in the light as it catches the water?
it’s frightening, but it’s beautiful.
taxed to write in null, a ceaseless binding variant in characters
complete and infinite to all but the finite typographer.
so simple in stature and speech
an aching blindness to rhyme and reason
not truly a machine but no longer primal
we ascend the realm of practicality and are dissolved to a theorem
a metaphor mirroring the everlasting letters themselves.
sooner or later, will anything remain unwritten?
almost surely-
everything is rendered common;
destined to retrace every line uttered by the greats
each historical exchange of human language
created both equal and void in the name of probability.
and what about you?
with knuckles bent and cramped at the typewriter,
you are left for eternity to prove a fit of hypotheticals in sequence,
and will any thought still feel original?
any and all comprehensible notions will one day make their way
across the unbounded page, but were they ever yours to begin with?