Tuckahoe NY Pride

Steven Reigns is an American poet whose work centers LGBTQ history, intimacy, and community memory—often by recovering stories that were ignored or erased. He is especially known for writing connected to the AIDS crisis and its aftermath, using poetry as a form of testimony and care. Reigns has also worked as an educator and oral historian, helping preserve lived experiences of queer people across generations. His poems tend to braid everyday detail with historical witness, showing how bodies, relationships, grief, and survival shape identity. Through readings, teaching, and publishing, he contributes to LGBTQ cultural continuity and intergenerational understanding.

From “My Mother’s Green Thumb”
I look at my belly button these days,
amazed that at one time
my mother was the only one I knew, needed, relied upon
that her body was the gate to the world
I stepped through
years after my sister.