Bend Don’t Shatter is an anthology of poetry for young adults that realistically and beautifully deals with what it means to come of age as gay, lesbian, transgender, or, as is perhaps more often the case in adolescence, totally confused. The anthology approaches the seemingly unnavigable territory of teenage sexuality and confusion with poems written by adults who keenly remember the turmoil, pain and excitement of adolescence and sexual coming of age. The poems are written with the insight and clarity of perspective and understanding that comes with years.

The book shows that teenage sexuality is more nuanced and complicated than it is often given credit for. The anthology explores not only the harrowing aspects of transitioning into adulthood, but also addresses the confused joy of it, the heated happiness, the shock of sexual discovery, the thrill of waking up to our own identities.

The book is valuable in that it not only provides a service of sorts—giving young adults a thing with which they can identify, a thing that might comfort, console, explain, entertain, and illuminate—but also just as importantly, it brings the pleasures of poetry to an audience for whom poetry itself might seem as unfathomable as adulthood itself.

Cole Rachel is a poet living in New York City. He is the author of Surviving the Moment of Impact (Soft Skull Press).

Rita D. Costello grew up on an island in the Niagara River. She has since spent long periods of time living in New York, Ohio, Kansas and Louisiana. She is a writer and also teaches English, Literature and Creative Writing, having taught at various universities in Kansas, Louisiana and China. Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), The Chattahoochee Review, Emrys Journal, The Seattle Review, The Baltimore Review, New Delta Review, Midland Review, The Panhandler, Plainsongs, Fireweed, Amaranth, Owen Wister Review, Louisiana Literature as well as many others. Her poetry has won the Glimmer Train poetry prize and the T. Reese Marsh prize.

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an excerpt from the novel i.d.
first thought in my head waking up was, oh no.
i can't say.
it was that girl.
lee.
and
and
a wondering.
veins of her hands generous. thriving.
healthy dirt under her nails.
is she awake now?
and my mom's early morning voice pulling at me.
be Normal, says the tone of her voice.
breakfast is ready.
everything is Fine.
there is a disturbing hum alive in my body. i can hear it over mom's footsteps.
that brooklyn hum of no source.
it gets into my bones
throws my heart out of whack.
(the earth vibrates with a specific resonance.
a hum, they say.
you can measure its amplitude in the trees, they say.)
there aren't enough trees in brooklyn.
there are: generators, garbage trucks, air conditioners, satellite tvs, switch buildings. neighbors with machinery, always constructing things. there are helicopters. airplanes.
and
and there are girls.
* * * *
lee swoops in on me from elsewhere.
makes me lay my head down on my desk.
what did lee say?
that she always knew she liked girls. was sure of it from third grade:
transfixed by anna shay's smile
transfixed by the monday tuesday wednesday underwear rumpled up above the waistband
by her toughskins
her soft skin
* * * *
i think i forgot. i've forgotten so much.
the night i woke up hot under too many afghans. my True Best Friend's leg thrown over my hips.
mouth silent.
fast breath.
i breathe once, she breathes three times.
yes, i remember counting. cataloguing the numbers.
one two three breaths. she.
oh man, she.
she mumbled in her sleep.
i remember.
nonsense alien talk.
"oh really," i say. "tell me more."
her hot leg shifts.
hot under afghans, chill air in the winter room and i lay there and can't sleep.
she
says to a bathroom fulla girls, "yeah i got it on with jamie bickford,"
conspires in my ear "no way. no way a boy's getting down my pants just yet."
the fire. god i didn't know what it was then.
the fire in me from how she said pants.
i wake up that night,
her wrestler leg thrown across me
skyblue toenails poking through the afghan holes.
i count her breath, like sheep.
- robin pickering
clock
attraction comes from the mind
me, I want to touch him. bad
I want to know everything
still is going to be alright,
hope for him,
so I follow him around
look at the floor,
follow his lead.
He is searching books
in the back of the antique store,
the dust covers shelve us in.
me behind him,
He faces me forward
I want to touch
black his jacket
his hair smell
nuzzle against his neck.
I want to get inside of him,
and I want to fall forward.
I want him inside me, beside me,
In front of me
I see his nape, the back of his neck,
I want to fall forward, to trace
my prints there, to grasp him
with this clutch wrapped around him,
gentle, and pull him near, as
He almost backs up into me, and
We meet, but he turns, pouting now
because his shoe is untied.
He's twice my years, and
I want to hold him like I would a child
I bend down and tie a knot for him,
I could so easily be gone
then had a clock to punch,
when he asked now what
-Douglas A. Martin

Song to Myself at Seventeen
I didn’t know how to save you then,
so forgive me. How you were able
to latch onto your spirit and go on
breathing, astonishes me even now.
Even though you knew who wrote
Faggot on your locker in indelible ink
your junior year, you never said a word.
And still somehow, you kept going.
In your mind, you sang to them
and your voice filled them with light.
You imagined they became your friends:
the ones who stole your gym bag,
smashed the headlights on your car,
or yelled Queer down the hall at you.
Still, you kept walking. And singing.
Quietly, almost silently, to yourself.
But then, how you found the courage
to take on the choir solo, I’ll never know.
Your lips trembled next to the mic.
At first, a tremor, catch in the throat.
Then the first notes, unsteady
and broken, but poised to soar.
Flaming Caruso. How you torched
the auditorium with your song.
Then afterwards, the handshakes
and back pats from the prom king,
captain of the varsity football team.
All docile. All dumbstruck. All yours.
Until you left alone that night.
I didn’t know then. If I could have
somehow stood next to you,
walked you to your car. Made sure
you got safely through the dark parking lot.
Now some twenty years later,
I still touch my throat. That thin line
of raised white scar tissue. But
I am not silent. I’m singing
to the you who once was me,
and to all the brave Carusos
who dream their voices into the world,
a little wounded, but on fire.

-Gerard Wozek


you can’t go back to sleep
that year it was like everyone i knew fell out of a tree, hurt
themselves recklessly for show, a display of wringing limbs,
self-conscious origami of appendages that seemed suddenly new
and necessary, as if we’d just received these parts, just learned
that there were unknown things they might do, other possible uses suddenly possible
plausible, and i follow you on your bike through the path you choose--twisting
dirt alleys and ditch bridges, i sensed the weight of them then--arms and legs held
together by the stringy heat of sinews and muscle, straining, straining to hold a course
to follow you to the field behind the baseball diamond, the heat there a vacuum
and let you insist that this was actually my idea, the way we hide
our bikes in a shallow gully, sneaking through trash and weeds, taller, more sure
than us, until we come to a spot where the grass is pushed flat by other bodies, other kids
come to smoke pot and drink stolen beers
we are alone here, and you might motion then
that we lay down, maybe me on top of you, our faces not touching, not kissing, not looking
at each other, slipping hands underneath clothes, into them
placing our mouths on places other than mouths, our movements a mimic of something
we can only guess at, until after several minutes, slick, uneasy, you say stop
ok, you say, ok. there is a wave passing over us, a wind
of smothering, a thick breeze, we dress and shake this off, don’t
speak, move back to our bicycles, our action figures, our endless streets, sidewalks
driveways, and vague ideas--the heats and stirrings, the hint of what we want
and wonder if everywhere in that warmth everyone else is waking
fumbling in bedrooms and bathtubs, at sleepovers and in tents, backyards,
and under blankets, fingers moving moving and moving
while the streets spread out, heat hazy and limitless, bodies become
slowly aware of themselves, uncalibrated instruments, the wheezes
and honks they produce, the uncontrolled bellows, the cacophony
a not so secret language--the clamor of singing parts--
of hips, hands and curious palms, shoulders, thighs
and suddenly upturned flesh, a chorus of hungry noises
that will soon resemble a tune, a summer song
we will eventually recognize as our own
-T. Cole Rachel