Books like School of fish by Eileen Myles

A decade‑long exploration of butch‑femme dynamics among contemporary lesbians, blending oral histories, fiction, poetry, and fantasy to rethink identity, sexuality, and cultural roles.

Eileen Myles’ autobiographical novel recounts her 1960s Catholic upbringing, alcoholic father, rebellious adolescence, lesbian identity, and bohemian life as a poet in 1970s New York.

A powerful debut collection in which Phillip B. Williams uses precise, urban‑themed poems to confront racism, homophobia and the complexities of desire in African American gay lives.

A collection of feminist poems exploring themes of womanhood, motherhood, and the complexities of gender roles.

A comprehensive anthology of June Jordan’s poetry, spanning over six hundred pages of lyricism, elegiac verse, and vibrant vernacular, including unpublished “last poems” that showcase her powerful engagement with identity, activism, and human connection.

Olga Broumas’s poetry collection interweaves sensuality, Greek myth, and feminist perspectives, offering a fresh voice for lesbian and LGBTQ readers.

A vibrant collection of Judy Grahn’s poetry, blending newer verses with selections from her earlier works, embodying the spirit of social movements and celebrating love, community, earth, and spirit.

When a runaway waitress leaves her lover and her Dalmatian dog to hit the highway, she journals her road trip in heartfelt letters while composing poetry that explores love, heartache, and madness.

Eileen Myles' semi‑autobiographical novel follows a young female writer in New York’s punk and indie scene, exploring her emerging sexuality and creative drive with vivid, humorous, and poignant insight.

Eileen Myles’ essays journey from New York to Iceland, weaving observations of art, culture, and queer life into reflections on national identity and creative practice.

Fire to Fire compiles Mark Doty’s most celebrated poems alongside new work, reflecting on human mortality, fleeting beauty, desire, and art’s transformative power.

What the Body Told is the second book of poetry from Rafael Campo, a practicing physician, a gay Cuban American, and winner of the National Poetry Series 1993 Open Competition. Exploring the themes begun in his first book, The Other Man Was Me, Campo extends the search for identity into new realms of fantasy and physicality. He travels inwardly to the most intimate spaces of the imagination where sexuality and gender collide and where life crosses into death. Whether facing a frenetic hospital emergency room to assess a patient critically ill with AIDS, or breathing in the quiet of his mother’s closet, Campo proposes with these poems an alternative means of healing and exposes the extent to which words themselves may be the most vital working parts of our bodies. The secret truths in What the Body Told, as the title implies, are already within each of us; in these vivid and provocative poems, Rafael Campo gives them a voice. Lost in the Hospital It’s not that I don’t like the hospital. Those small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave. The smell of antiseptic cleansers. The ill, so wistful in their rooms, so true. My friend, the one who’s dying, took me out To where the patients go to smoke, IV’s And oxygen tanks attached to them— A tiny patio for skeletons. We shared A cigaratte, which was delicious but Too brief. I held his hand; it felt Like someone’s keys. How beautiful it was, The sunlight pointing down at us, as if We were important, full of life, unbound. I wandered for a moment where his ribs Had made a space for me, and there, beside The thundering waterfall of is heart, I rubbed my eyes and thought “I’m lost.”

Pat Parker’s collected poems celebrate African‑American lesbian identity, feminist politics, and cultural defiance through powerful voice and performance.