Tuesday poem #603 : Han VanderHart : I Like to Think Emily Dickinson Would Read The Ethical Slut under an Umbrella by the Pool

 

 

that she’d sext so cryptically
& well—sending the words 

“Dispatch from Finitude”
accompanied by a nude

(dusk falling and her
bare hips against a quilt)

that her first video
touching herself she shared

with the bees
and Higginson, in that order

to make him gasp
(the bees already knew)

and the lines: “what it means
for poetry to breathe”

that with Susan she shared
her tongue and all of June

that she pollinated Amherst
face first, ass out, dusted with pollen

while cultivating her privacy
with abandon

that she had more lovers even
than she had poems, which numbered 

just under 1800      

Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Their manuscript Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025) received the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, judged by Chanda Feldman. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and co-edits the poetry press River River Books with Amorak Huey.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan