Join The Dillydoun Review in celebrating National Poetry Month with

A Poem by Mateo Perez Lara

When it was easier to hide in the haze of my youth
Not yet accepting of the bright hot sun
on my back in retreat of lesser gods, men
evoking rituals on the soft body, reviving
little ceremonies of distrust, I knew
hiding was verb and noun, the act
and the person. A hiding. Is hiding.
In him. On him. Inside him. Them.
Before I carved the binary out of my bone
Before I could look at myself and sweet-kiss it.

Mateo Perez Lara is a queer, brown, non-binary, Latinx poet from California. They received their M.F.A. in Poetry as part of the first cohort to graduate from Randolph College’s Creative Writing Program. They are an editor for RabidOak Online Literary Journal. They have a chapbook, Glitter Gods, published with Thirty West Publishing House. Their poems have been published in EOAGH, The Maine Review, and elsewhere.