Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to feature Dustin Brookshire’s poem “When I Was Straight” as our first featured chapbook poem of Issue 10: Fall 2025. You can find more poetry in his chapbook, Repeat As Needed, published in May by Harbor Editions, an imprint of Small Harbor Publishing.
When I Was Straight
After Maureen Seaton’s “When I Was Straight”
I stayed home
while my mother
drove to the grocery store.
Two hours alone to prance
in my mother’s high heels,
wear her dresses and nightgowns,
and a white t-shirt as a wig.
I’d probe her jewelry box,
slip on a ring or two,
a necklace, and the bracelet
she only wore for special occasions.
Sometimes I even applied
her lipstick with a smile.
I’d sit back straight, legs crossed
directing the household staff
that we didn’t have
on the tasks of the day:
vacuum, mop, polish the china,
and press the laundry—
a boss lady before
being a boss lady was a thing.
I’d twirl around the living room
with one hand extended,
an invitation to a man
who wouldn’t enter my life
for another thirty-five years.
When I was straight,
my father would say,
I’d rather one of my sons
blow my brains out
than tell me he’s gay.
(This poem was first published by TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics. It is published here with the author’s permission.)
About the Poem
Denise Duhamel spotlighted Maureen Seaton’s ‘When I Was Straight’ in the Best American Poetry Blog in February 2023. It had been years since I read Maureen’s poem from her collection Little Ice Age (Invisible City Press, 2001). Reading the poem online transported me back to my first reading. I experienced the same joy and appreciation for Maureen’s humor and wit that I did when I first encountered it. This time, however, ‘When I Was Straight’ prompted me to think about a common queer experience—how most parents assume their children are ‘straight’ and expect their children to live a ‘straight’ life. I couldn’t stop thinking about specific memories from my childhood. Maureen’s poem inspired me to write my own ‘When I Was Straight.’ The poem was a natural fit for my chapbook Repeat As Needed (Harbor Editions, 2025), which is a collection of poems that are all inspired by/emulations/clapbacks. Maureen’s poem even inspired me to invite poets to write their own ‘When I Was Straight’ poems and create an anthology (When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Editions, 2024)). We lost Maureen in August 2023, but I’ll never forget her light, kindness, and poems.
Author Bio
Dustin Brookshire (he/him) is the author of the chapbooks Repeat As Needed (Harbor Editions, 2025), Never Picked First For Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). His debut poetry full-length collection, For All Of Us Faggots, is forthcoming from Iron Oak Editions in 2027. He’s the editor of the Lambda Literary Award finalist anthology When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Editions, 2024) and the co-editor of the Nautilus Book Awards silver medal recipient Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023). The 2024 recipient of the Jon Tribble Editors Fellowship and curator of the Zoom-based Wild & Precious Life Series, find Dustin online at dustinbrookshire.com.
From Repeat As Needed
“Dustin Brookshire’s Repeat as Needed begins with “When I was Straight,” one of the most moving and memorable poems of the last decade. Like many of the poems in this collection, it is an “after poem” inspired by a poem of the same name by Maureen Seaton. Although most of the poems in this collection are provoked by poems written by Brookshire’s poetic mentors, the unmistakable voice is entirely his own. In a terrifying time, as rights of LGBTQIA+, women, immigrants, and differently abled people are being systematically dismantled by the current administration, this book is more important than ever. “Straight people/will say they love us/and vote for politicians/seeking to strip us/of our rights,” he writes in “Straight People.” While many of these poems grapple with painful experiences, they also understand, as Toi Derricotte wrote, “Joy is an act of resistance.” —Jennifer Franklin, author of If Some God Shakes Your House (Four Way Book, 2023)
Contents
Chapbook Poem: When I Was Straight by Dustin Brookshire
“‘When I Was Straight’ prompted me to think about a common queer experience—how most parents assume their children are ‘straight’ and expect their children to live a ‘straight’ life.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: American Girl: Fort Hood, 2023 by Thea Matthews
“[W]eaving in and juxtaposing the lyrics of Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl.’ The song’s themes of desperation, wanderlust, and longing are subverted by Ana’s life and tragedy at Fort Cavazos, previously known as Fort Hood, Texas.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
“It seems such a shame that a beautiful location is just gathering dust and overgrowth, and I wanted to lean into the juxtaposition of that.” Read three poems by Bryana Fern along with a few words about “Women on the Wall.”
Bodies in Transition: Sacred & Perishable by Carissa Natalia Baconguis
“There is a muscular intimacy to the ecosystem of these poems, each one of them creating as vivid a world individually as exists in the collection as a whole.” Read Gray Davidson Carroll’s full review.
“In ‘No Breaks’ I was writing about something I hope I never have to experience. … I tried to keep despair at bay and show some defiance and resilience.” Read two poems by Gerald Yelle along with a few words about “No Breaks.”
November ’25: New Staff, Issue Archive & Donations
Read a note from Editor Aiden Hunt about our new Poetry Readers, the additions of an Issue Archive and a Contributor Fund, Fall poetry submissions, and Gaza.
Chapbook Poem: Two egrets at the edge of a tidal marsh by Rebekah Wolman
“Settling on the mirror form opened the way into the parallels between the original image of the egrets, their reflection, and their ambiguous relationship and the shifting, even reversing, roles of an adult daughter and her aging mother…” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for November 2025 along with words from the poet.
Three Poems by Alexandra Burack
“Subsequent drafts enabled me to … uncover the metaphor of exile, whose meanings are intended to move readers from an experience of alienation to one of discernment of the liberating qualities of outsiderhood.” Read three poems by Alexandra Burack, along with a few words about “To Know Blue From the Color of Snow at Dusk.”
Book Excerpt: Rondo by Yamini Pathak
“The sculpture gardens are located on … the native land of the Lenape people. The poem is a conversation between sculpture, land, and its human and more-than-human inhabitants.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for November 2025, “Rondo” from Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps by Yamini Pathak, along with a few words from the poet.
Two Poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth
“As I shaped the poem, the olive trees became a witness to a deeper experience—to a region’s ongoing, collective pain. It was the land I wanted to make speak in a place where I did not have words.” Read two poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth, along with a few words about “Before.”
A Conversation with Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes
“We wanted something that was alive, highlighted an ever-expanding list of books by these poets, and that will hopefully survive the both of us and flourish under the curation of a fresh set of poets.” Read the full interview about the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook series.
Chapbook Poem: Red Tide by Mary Gilliland
“Reflection, research, a public service announcement, an old Zen koan, and 3 weeks of bicycling for groceries with a bandana tied around my nose and mouth inform ‘Red Tide’.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for December 2025, “Red Tide” from Red Tide at Sandy Bend, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Veronica Tucker
“’You Left the Fridge Open Again’ transforms an ordinary domestic moment into a meditation on tenderness and decay. The open refrigerator becomes a quiet altar, its hum a hymn to what lingers after love’s warmth has cooled.” Read three poems by Veronica Tucker, along with a few words about “You Left the Fridge Open Again.”
Book Excerpt: The Samadhi of Words by Richard Collins
“Zen poets, past and present, who experience deep absorption in the grandeur of this world may even gain wisdom through the way of poetry, Shidō (詩道). This is the samadhi of words.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for December 2025, “The Samadhi of Words” from Stone Nest by Richard Collins, along with a few words from the poet.
December ’25: Pushcart Prize Nominations
Editor Aiden Hunt announces Philly Chapbook Review’s 2026 Pushcart Prize anthology nominations in this editor’s note and provides links to, and a carousel of, the nominated poems.
“From the height of the camel, I could see the ruins of Palmyra and a medieval castle on a hill. Present day Wadi Rum in Jordan has no evidence of an ancient civilization in the desert until one arrives, by car not camel, in Petra.” Read two poems by Sandy Feinstein, our sixth and final biweekly poet of the Fall 2025 issue, along with a few words about “Souvenir.”