by Matthew Young
Grant Chemidlin is the author of What We Lost in the Swamp (Central Avenue Poetry, 2023), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His newest collection, In the Middle of a Better World, will be published by Central Avenue Poetry in February 2026. Recent poems can be found in The Los Angeles Review, Palette Poetry, Laurel Review, Quarterly West, and the Academy of American Poets, among other publications. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband and cat, and teaches poetry with PocketMFA and the Poetry Society of New York. He recently talked to Gulf Stream’s Poetry Editor Matthew Young about his upcoming poetry collection, In the Middle of a Better World (Central Avenue Poetry, 2026).
Matthew Young: Hi Grant! I’m so excited to be speaking with you today, and of course I was honored to read your wonderful collection, In the Middle of a Better World, that’s coming out next February. It’s a beautiful collection from the poems within to the note to the readers. I’m a bit upset that note isn’t going to be in the final version since it’s so joyful and lovely, but readers can find that on your Instagram page! And, of course there’s the gorgeous cover art from Joseph Christian Leyendecker. I read it three times now and some individual poems many more times than that, and with each read it gets better and I find new things to love. So I’m very grateful to be talking with you today.
Grant Chemidlin: Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here and grateful for this opportunity to talk about the book.
MY: Alright, so my first question is probably one that you have heard before, but this is your second collection. Your first one was What We Lost in the Swamp, but for In the Middle of a Better World, how did the process change from creating that first collection? I think I read somewhere that you started an MFA program after you had gotten some substantial work done on your first collection, so presumably In the Middle of a Better World happened somewhere during that MFA. So I was wondering about the process there.
GC: Yeah, that’s a great question. My first book, What We Lost in the Swamp, I actually wrote at the start of the pandemic in 2020. Being stuck inside left me with a lot of time to think—about my past, about my closeted childhood. I guess writing became a bit of a coping mechanism, or at least, a form of escape.
Then in 2021, I started my MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles. I had actually written all of What We Lost in the Swamp by that point. I was pretty happy with it and happy with the poems, and I didn’t want to bring the project into the MFA program just to spend two years rehashing it. That didn’t feel exciting to me, so I ended up putting it down. I wanted to just fully let loose and experiment and try new things and generate new work.
I’m sure you know, with your MFA program, you have to have a “final manuscript” at the end, as part of the grading. That’s what In the Middle of a Better World grew out of. It’s the product of all my wandering and absorbing and experimenting during my MFA. It’s me actually understanding what “craft” is—how to analyze a poem, how to use form and line breaks.
I will say though, when I wrote What We Lost in the Swamp, it really came from such a pure place. I wasn’t thinking about MFA programs. I wasn’t thinking about publishing. I actually self-published that book first before it got picked up by a traditional publisher. I just wasn’t thinking about success or career in that sense. Now, having gone through the MFA, I am thinking more about literary journals and publications and being a “successful” poet, which brings pressure and distractions, but maybe also more discipline, or a clearer drive. So yeah, these thoughts have definitely changed my process, for better and for worse, if that makes sense.
MY: It does. It makes perfect sense. And I think I could see more of that like intentionality in terms of craft from your first book to this one, especially around structure.
One of the questions I wanted to ask is about the repeated lines at the start of each of the four sections in this book. Each section starts with a line where the letters F, A, and G, spelling out “fag,” are first erased. And then they’re emboldened—it’s like an anti-erasure poem. I also want to note that I am gay, I’m not a straight person throwing around the word fag, just to make that clear.
What I was wondering in terms of structure is the why behind that specific choice of leading each section that way. I kind of read it as thinking about how pervasive that word can be both with internal self-perception, but also how others perceive you. But I wanted to hear your intention there.
GC: Originally, I just had the six fag poems you see scattered throughout the book, then later, decided to add in the section break “mini poems,” I call them, to act as a key to help the reader understand the fag poems. The repeated lines going from erasure to bold are meant to clue the reader in, help them see the pattern, help them learn the rules of the “fag” form.
What I love is how they act in contrast with the fag poems, like you just said. It’s almost like a restoring of the fag poems. The fag poems feel very—because they’re erasure—elusive. They are challenging, they are frustrating. They are a narrative with pieces missing. And in those section breaks, the “mini poems,” it’s like the letters F-A-G are being restored, like the narrative is being restored. It’s about queerness and coming back into the letters, and actually feeling empowered by them.
MY: I definitely felt that while reading. And in terms of the structure of this collection, the narrative plays a really big part. I’m thinking, and maybe this is jumping ahead, but the poem “After Reading My New Manuscript” has that meta commentary on what a gay poetry manuscript would look like. But we could leave that for later.
GC: I’m happy to jump wherever! You lead the way and I’ll follow.
MY: Okay! To use those “mini poems” as a segue, I’d like to hear more about the fag poems within. I’d like to bring up a specific example, one where the form equals function with that erasure of the poems. It’s the one that starts with, “Do I count if I’ve never spoken a wish…” I think it was originally published in Palette Poetry. That’s where I first read it. Then there’s the poem “Leather Bars.” I think these two poems have a conversation with each other in terms of the perception of queerness.
I think, broadly, there are two ends of the spectrum. One being the idea of, am I not queer enough because I haven’t had these specific experiences. On the other end there’s the want to be the type of queer person that’s more palatable to straight people. So I was wondering how that choice of using those two forms—because we have the fag poem form and then the use of dialogue, explicitly, within “Leather Bars.” Could you talk about the structural form choices there?
GC: That’s a great question. And I’ve actually never thought about those two poems communicating or talking with each other, but you’re completely right.
I think this question really gets at what I hope to do in my poetry. When I write, I’m trying to understand queerness generally and then what queerness is to me—trying to define it for myself, because it is a spectrum. Part of this book is concerned with coming out, but it’s mainly about what it is like to—after coming out—just be a queer body, living in the world, moving through the world.
As you can tell in the book, I’ve gotten married, which some people in the queer community would say is heteronormative conformity, but others would argue is a hard-fought right and a path to normalizing ourselves in the eyes of society. A lot of the poems in this book are me trying to figure out: Okay, well I am married. What does that mean for me as a queer person? What does it mean in contrast to those who have open marriages or go to orgies? In what ways am I still performing an identity, and for who? I’m not necessarily trying to come to any answers about what’s “right” or “wrong,” but more hoping to come as close as possible to an understanding of what makes me happy and what feels right for me.
MY: I think you illustrate that really well. I feel like one of the themes you cover a lot, which you kind of just mentioned, is stereotype or trope versus individual experience. Especially in those two poems, it comes across clearly. In that same vein of trying to define queerness, specifically your individual definition or experience, I wanted to bring up some of the poems that explicitly deal with sex.
I was thinking about “Cruising” or “The Poker Game” or the poem Gulf Stream was fortunate to publish, “Little Quaint House.” Within those, that same theme of self-perception, but also others’ perception, plays into it. With “Cruising,”there’s the idea of not leaving a trace and then the opposite in “The Poker Game,” with being seen and judged, taking other’s thoughts into account. And with “Little Quaint House” there’s the idea of a journey or being at different steps in time in terms of exploring sex.
So I was wondering about your approach to navigating all of that explicitly with sex, which can be a heavy, more prevalent issue when discussing queerness.
GC: Yeah, I mean, I think when we talk about sex as queer people, as gay men specifically, it is so tied not only to shame, but to evil, in the biblical sense. It has been demonized and we are told at an early age that it is wrong and bad. I think In the Middle of a Better World represents the point in my life and career when I realized I needed to write the gayest book possible. I needed to reject those ideas and finally talk openly about sex, write openly about sex. Just be vulnerable enough to own it and not allow myself to walk on eggshells or be afraid of what other people might think.
And, you didn’t mention this poem, but “Reflex” is a poem I wrote that’s all about blow jobs. I feel so powerful when I read that poem. There’s something very freeing in saying to myself, and to the reader: Yes, I’m a man that gives blow jobs.And no, it is not demeaning or a sign of weakness, but actually sexy and hot.
I think I’ve lost the question a bit, but yeah, just understanding the importance of writing sex as a way of self-acceptance, as a way of normalizing. Going back to “Cruising,” that poem, although it ends pretty sadly—and is more in a closeted era of the speaker’s journey—it really is about the softness between men, showing sex and queer desire as natural in a literal, natural landscape. Even though the two men are hidden away in a forest, beyond society’s gaze, the poem allows the reader a peek into their beauty, into queer beauty.
MY: I could definitely see that. One of the things I really liked in that note to readers at the beginning of the collection is how you described In the Middle of a Better World as an invitation. I can see this in the way you constructed the collection.
You were talking about how “Cruising” comes more from a shame point of view and that “Reflex” is the opposite, something that feels empowering to read. “Cruising” is from the first section, while “Reflex” is from the final section.Getting back to the speaker’s journey, I was wondering how you ordered the poems in the collection in terms of a narrative sense—was that something that you had in mind?
GC: Yes, definitely. This book has gone through so many different iterations. The last iteration before this final version was almost half the length, about 50 pages. I had cut around 20 poems, almost the entire first section, because I decided I didn’t want to have any of the closeted or coming out poems.
But then when I reread it, I felt it had lost a lot of its feeling. And sort of what you said, the sense of completeness. I missed the narrative, the payoff at the end with the marriage. The healing and self-acceptance didn’t shine quite as brightly when the reader didn’t first have to go through, experience, those closeted/coming out poems.
So, I decided to bring back the narrative. I wanted an arc from beginning to end: speaker closeted, coming out, dating someone, getting married. But I didn’t want it to feel, no pun intended, like a rainbow. That felt too neat.
I wanted it more like one of those earthquake machines, I’m forgetting the name. A straight line oscillating back and forth as it moves forward. Back and forth between these moments of pure pride and joy and then these moments of residual shame and internalized homophobia. That felt much more true to my own queer experience, and I would think, to the queer experience at large. We don’t just come out and suddenly all of that shame and fear and self-consciousness is gone.
That’s also where the fag poems come in, why I placed them where I did. You have poems that are very joyful and explicitly sexual and proud of that. And then, immediately after, there might be a fag poem that undercuts it and is about feeling self-conscious or feeling judged or self-censoring. I think about the USPS fag poem near the end of the collection, which is based on a real interaction. I had just gotten married. I was standing in the post office and an older woman asked me about my sweatshirt. When I explained the sweatshirt is connected to my wedding, the woman replied: “Wow, a summer camp wedding! You’re a fun one, aren’t you? Gosh, your wife is lucky.”
She didn’t mean any harm by it. She made an assumption. But I just stood there and didn’t say anything. I could have kindly corrected her and set the record straight, but I didn’t. And in that moment I sort of erased my wedding and my queerness and my husband for the sake of not making her uncomfortable, for the sake of not feeling uncomfortable myself. Feeling guilty, I went home and wrote the poem. Somehow, writing about it, admitting my mistake, made me feel better—it sort of metabolized my shame and guilt, and I felt like I could move forward.
I think the USPS poem exemplifies the arc I was going for. A lot of back and forth, but hopefully the needle points more toward, or more often toward, pride than shame.
MY: That was one of the poems, that poem with the friendly older woman, that I wanted to mention because I feel like I could have seen or read a version of this collection where it all culminates and ends with the wedding.
I feel like maybe 10 years ago that could have been something that I saw. But I think that fourth section, which shows the aftermath and how life isn’t just, no pun intended, rainbows and sunshine and a lack of internal strife after the wedding, felt very realistic and true. Even if it’s not a truth that’s the most fun or the most empowering thing to see, it felt very honest. That was the fag poem that showed that juxtaposition and really hit me the hardest.
Maybe we can move on to something a little bit lighter. One of the things I really liked was the kind of joy, or wonder, that we saw throughout the collection, especially in the surrealist or speculative elements. There’s the very first poem about this speaker seeing someone holding bits of cloud, like cotton candy and eating it. There’s also “Witches,” where the speaker is an owl watching this gathering with wonder, and I was curious how you incorporated those speculative elements in connection to joy. You have this almost otherworldly sense in these metaphors for real world experiences.
GC: Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say first, when I think about this collection as a whole, I sequenced it as a bit of a movement or evolution from the surreal and the imaginative, to something that feels more grounded and more in reality, everyday life. That felt important to me because as queer people, especially when we’re closeted, so much of our lives are spent in the imagination—either imagining coming out and finding happiness, or imagining our family saying how terrible we are because we’re gay. Secretly imagining the desires we wish we could give into. And, at least for me, using imagination as a suppression tactic—thinking, if I can make my queerness abstract and surreal, then I won’t have to fully name it.
But then, as the collection moves forward, and the speaker is becoming more openly gay, the poems start to feel a bit “realer.” There isn’t as big of a need for imagination or abstraction. The speaker is more in the world and less in his own head.
I love what you said about wonder, though. Wonder is definitely a big part of my writing style. Regardless of a poem’s content, I always want to give the reader a sense of wonder that brings them back to a childlike awe.
I think it’s so important as humans to be in touch with that inner child and that inner wonder. I think especially relating it to queerness, but I think in general, the most potent form of wonder has an edge of anxiety or fear to it, right? Maybe to me wonder doesn’t feel a hundred percent authentic or truthful if it’s just joyful.
Going back to “The Beginning of Love,” that first poem with the cotton candy clouds, it is a really wondrous image and playful, but at the end it does turn. There’s an anxiety and a fear of seeing the power that love can have over the speaker. There’s the question: if this man is able to grab clouds from the sky, like cotton candy, what could he do to me? And what power do I hold?
The same thing with “Witches.” The poem, I’d say, starts from a place of judgement—a speaker witnessing a group of people being so openly queer and fluid and just unabashedly themselves. The speaker is maybe feeling their own internalized homophobia, or just bumping up against that fear of the unknown, that fear of vulnerability. Then, as the poem goes on, the speaker transforms and so does the fear. It becomes, maybe what it really always was: wonder.
I guess I like writing wonder and try my best to have there be an edge of anxiety or discomfort or just uncertainty among the wonder, so it doesn’t feel like a flat one dimensional emotion or experience.
MY: I think you addressed this, the critiquing of queer judgement, in one of the fag poems. I think it was the one where the speaker finally posted the poem on bottoming. I was wondering about that perspective, because you touched on it with a critique of yourself, and here there’s the reaction you got from queer people to be “one of the good ones” or to project a certain part of yourself while pushing other parts down. This whole collection goes against that idea with the theme of invitation and being honest. So in writing that poem, how did you try to balance that?
GC: Yeah, that poem specifically, I would say is a critique of the queer community, but then when you get to the end of the poem, what it actually is, is a critique of society, of heteronormative society. Again, this fag poem is based on a real experience. I posted a poem about bottoming on TikTok and I was shocked that the people commenting pretty terrible, hurtful things were actually queer people, were gay men. I sat with it for a while, wondering why, they of all people, would want to tear me down. It goes back to our—and we all have this—internalized homophobia, and I think we see another queer person being so openly queer and it activates that part of us, which is horrible and unfortunate and I think it’s something that we all have to work through.
It’s of course trolling culture too. People see comments, they want to seem funny, to pile on, be a part of the cool kids. But overall, in this instance, I think it stems most deeply from shame.
I wasn’t trying to paint myself as a victim in the poem. It was really more about exploring this very eye-openingexperience. It made me realize, oh yeah, this actually makes sense. I think the last line of the poem “we do the guilty work of someone else” really demonstrates the effects of heteronormative culture. We’ve been conditioned to hate ourselves and hate queer people. And again, that doesn’t just go away after coming out. We have to reflect on ourselves, on our community, and think about how we can uplift each other and step out of what has been ingrained in us.
“Little Quaint House” is a poem about a secret fling I had with a coworker who was openly gay and much older than me. I ended up kind of using him, which is hard to admit. I didn’t think I was necessarily using him at the time, but it was an opportunity for me to safely experiment as a closeted person trying to figure myself out. He fell in love, and I didn’t, and then I ended up sort of cutting and running. I was comfortable and ready to go off on my own. Now, I realize how unfair and hurtful it was for me to do that to him, after he graciously gave me the time and space to wade into the waters of queerness and queer sex. So really, the poem is an apology. It’s me saying, I’m sorry and I’m grateful for that opportunity to grow, even if it happened to be at the expense of his emotions.
We could bring this back to heteronormative society too, how it forces us to figure ourselves out in secret, in these small bunkers of queerness. That puts a lot of stress and constraints on the situation—needing to be secretive, not feeling comfortable, and not being able to take our time. And that’s where a lot of hurt can come into play. A lot of feelings ofbetrayal.
MY: Yeah. I think that poem, “Little Quaint House,” is one of the most powerful ones in the collection. Me being unbiased working for the magazine who published it. But I think it blends that wonder, but also the anxiety that is pervasive throughout the collection really, really well. Kind of in that same vein, with what you’re talking about with how society can mold us, one of the poems I was thinking about was “Closer.” That reading into signs—finding signs that aren’t there, reading into themes too much and seeing them as signs to tamp down queerness—that this isn’t the right path to be on. “Copyright” was also one of the ones that really impacted me in a kind of similar idea.
One thing I wanted to mention earlier that I didn’t get a chance to is how being out can be another form of hiding. I think this whole conversation here is really relevant because a lot of the time when people—and I’m speaking from my own experiences—but when you first come out, there’s this feeling or need to be perfect, especially in front of the people that are close to you. That you don’t get to experiment and make those mistakes. And I think that’s something I saw reflected within this collection. The inevitability that this is a part of life and these scenes are going to happen and it’s going to be tumultuous, basically. So. On a personal level, I want to say thank you. I’m not sure if I mentioned it earlier, but I saw a lot of myself in this collection. And I really enjoyed it.
GC: Thank you. That’s so nice to hear. I think that’s what every writer wants to hear from a reader and a fellow poet. And that’s the goal of putting it out there—hoping people, especially queer people, can see themselves. Part of that poem, “Copyright,” that you mentioned is about who gets to tell the story when we are queer and coming out. It’s not, in a lot of ways, just our own story. It involves our family members, our friends. It involves their reactions, the choices they make that affect us and our choices that affect them. So it becomes messy and blurred. That poem is me wondering: Is it fair for me to write about my dad’s politics or discuss my parents’ reactions?
Is it fair to them or, because it’s my coming out story, do I get to do whatever I want? Do I need permission from them to release this out into the world for others to read? I think maybe it’s a case by case situation. I love my family and I’d never want to intentionally hurt or disparage them, but I’ve decided that if it feels like mostly my story, and it feels important to me, then it’s a story I have to tell, even if it involves other people. Because I think for so long, we, as queer people, don’t allow ourselves to be heard or to be seen or to even tell an authentic story. So to cut pieces from it for the sake of others just feels like we’re doing the same thing we’ve always done, thinking about others before ourselves.
MY: I also wanted to say, I think that personal line of wanting to protect your family versus wanting to be truthful and put these things on the page is also something that, again, I saw reflected in my own life from this. I mean, I tell my parents so much of what I’m up to and doing, but they don’t read many of my poems and, for example, I’ve not mentioned that I’m doing this interview with you, which very so much feels like keeping a secret, but at the same time it’s my own personal thing I get to do. So I feel like that kind of balance is something, especially in poems, that is always at the forefront of my mind.
GC: I think for me too, poetry is a way I communicate with them. When we come out, so much is still left unsaid or swept under the rug and it’s just easier once we’re past the initial conversations to act like nothing’s wrong or to not talk about it. And I think poetry—and writing in general—has become a way for me to reach them. Maybe the poems in this book will stir or start conversations with them. I could be better about it, of course, but it’s uncomfortable and sometimes it’s easier to just write the poem and put it out into the world instead of sitting down on the couch and rehashing the experience.
MY: That’s such a great way of explaining it. To move to something still in that personal vein, I’d like to talk about the wedding, which I loved so much. And it’s such a central piece of this collection. For my first question about it, I’d like toknow when in the process you knew it would be so important to the collection. Because you’re pulling from your life and you’ve made it so structurally important.
GC: It’s funny, I had a first draft of this book a few months before the wedding even happened, and it was originally called Man Marries Man. It had the poem “Man Marries Man” in it, which is a poem that takes place two months before the wedding. It’s me sort of ruminating on what that experience would look and feel like. I always say now, to my students when I’m teaching poetry, that you have to let time unfold and sometimes the manuscript will evolve and change and new poems that actually are absolutely meant to be in the book will reveal themselves.
I felt so silly—I had a version of this book, then I got married, and I was like, of course this book isn’t done. Of course I needed to experience my own wedding! I needed to write poems about how I felt during it, after it. But I think the original idea of the book, and again, going back to the MFA program, I would credit to one of my mentors, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo—she’s a wonderful poet here in Los Angeles. I was working with her one semester and she was reading a lot of these poems that are now in the book, and she said, You should write a whole book of queer love poems! And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. And that one comment kind of became the seed of this book, a central theme I started to write toward.
The wedding itself was, I mean, everyone says their wedding is the best moment of their life, but I really do think it is one of the greatest, or is the greatest, moment of my life thus far. It was a weekend long event. We were all—150 people—staying in cabins at this summer camp, and there was just this inherent sense of childlike wonder and nostalgia in the air. Just seeing everyone—all of our friends and family from different walks of life, different eras of our lives, walking together, canoeing together, talking on the dock together—it was this really wonderful experience. I mentioned this in the letter at the beginning of the book, which you’ve brought up, but it changed our parents, both sets of our parents. They see us differently now.
I’m from New Jersey and when I moved to Los Angeles—10 years ago now—my parents thought I would only be out here for maybe a year, then I’d move home. I think they still secretly hope one day I’ll move back East. But after the wedding, they finally, and deeply, understood that I’m okay out here, that I have this really wonderful community and found family and I think, now, they feel a bit at ease. They saw us as a queer couple with all of our friends and all of the joy and the light that surrounded us, that emanated from us. That joy, that shift in perspective in our parents, is what led me to want the wedding to be so central in the book.
MY: I think that definitely is felt, especially in the poem “Summer Camp Wedding,” with the arc of the mother being unsure if this is the right thing to do, and then in the closing there’s such a beautiful moment where everyone is having ajoyful time. And I will say, I know you said that everyone thinks their own wedding is the best, but as someone who doesn’t know you or your husband or family, just from reading this, I wanted to be a part of that joy. So all of that emotion really was conveyed so well.
GC: I think the joyful feeling was heightened because of how anxious I felt leading up to it. The wedding was really this ultimate, climactic moment of my coming out journey. To be so fully seen as gay by 150 people, my friends and my loved ones, some for the first time since I had come out, it scared me. I felt old habits of shame creeping back in. But then getting there and it being so wonderful and it going so well, juxtaposed with how anxious I was beforehand, made that joy feel even better, even more impactful.
MY: Of course! From reading your poems and getting both the anxiety and joy, each impacts the other. I mentioned this poem earlier, but I now want to fully bring up “After Reading My New Manuscript,” which is, in part, a commentary on the form of a poetry collection. I like the lines from the beginning: “the book needs / conflict. It’s one big exhale / without an inhale, if that makes sense,” from C. This ties into what you were mentioning earlier about how the wedding was such a joyful, wonderful time, but also how it was something that didn’t have a lack of anxiety attributed to it.
When it comes to writing about queer joy, and I see this sentiment going around a lot, that there’s a necessity of talking about it. But I think, and I’m not sure like your thoughts on this—I’m curious, I guess this is my question—if it’s impossible for queer joy to exist without this sense of anxiety about things. That it can’t be by itself in a vacuum?
GC: Absolutely, that’s part of why I structured the book this way. I think that inherently comes through in my writing as a queer person because, again, going back to wonder, no emotion is, like you said, in a vacuum on its own. It’s always being informed by all the other emotions simultaneously and queerness is so complex. There is so much emotional complexity that goes into it. I think we feel the most joyful when we have gone through something challenging and it’s that bit of release and that relief of the challenge now being behind us.
The poem you’re mentioning, “After Reading My New Manuscript,” is the acceptance of just living in the moment and knowing that things aren’t always going to be easy. Since writing that poem, things have gotten more difficult in my life and I think I was almost predicting that in the poem. But that doesn’t take away from my experience of writing this book, the experiences that led to the writing of this book, the joyful experiences. I wanted this book to be a record of that wedding and that joy and that light so I can remember it and bring it forward when things do get difficult and remember, during the moments that are more challenging, that joy could also be just around the corner too.
If you’re in a challenging time, if you’re closeted in a red state for instance, it is possible for happiness to be out there, waiting. And it’s up to us as individuals, as a society, to find it, to reach out for it. And that’s part of the journey of queerness and the journey of this book.
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Grant Chemidlin (he/him) is the author of What We Lost in the Swamp (Central Avenue Poetry, 2023), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. His newest collection, In the Middle of a Better World, will be published by Central Avenue Poetry in February 2026. Recent poems can be found in The Los Angeles Review, Palette Poetry, Laurel Review, Quarterly West, and the Academy of American Poets, among others. He lives in Los Angeles with his husband and cat, and teaches poetry with PocketMFA and the Poetry Society of New York.
Matthew Young (he/him) is a writer and MFA student at Florida International University, where he is a graduate instructor and the Poetry Editor of Gulf Stream Magazine. His poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, phoebe, The Penn Review, and elsewhere. His writing often examines the intersection between religion and queerness, as well as family, art, and light.
Gulf Stream Magazine 