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Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin
Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin is a swirl of energy, emotion and observation that takes the reader across the world on a Carmen Sandiego–like journey as well as deep into the complexities of modern queer life. Unabashedly sexual, and embracing a wide range of styles and tones, Byrne’s poems move easily from lines of love and desire to sharp critiques of capitalism and war, and the co-opting of queer culture by them both. These are destabilizing poems, poems filled with glittering imagery and ideas and questions and truths, poems that share the poet’s longing to live in a time that is not "as cruel and unjust / As every other time has been before it."
168 pages, Paperback
Published April 18, 2023
2 people are currently reading
101 people want to read
About the author
Jake Byrne
3 books4 followersJake Byrne is a poet and writer based in Toronto, Canada. Their work has been published in journals and anthologies in North America. Their poem “Parallel Volumes” won CV2’s Foster Poetry Prize for 2019, and their first two books of poetry are forthcoming in 2023 with Wolsak & Wynn and in 2024 with Brick Books, respectively.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 22, 2024
These poems are dark, sexually charged and witty. The writer uses beautiful poetic language to point to deep injustices and absurdities in our society. The standout piece is definitely the multimedia poem that closes the book. I’m looking forward to reading more by this writer!
May 16, 2023
Jake is a friend of mine--but, standing outside of myself as best I can, I'd say this is a great read, and one that's really good for people both new to poetry and deep into verse. It's a horny travelogue, a collage of cumshots and temporary lovers, a rumination on what it means to see the world and see the world for what it is. It's funny and hot, and every poem has a brilliant turn of phrase that stings like a fat salt crystal on a luxe chocolate chip cookie: almost too much, almost, but a sensory rush all the same that makes you want another bite, and another, and another. Do read.
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June 12, 2023i guess i have a taste for pufferfish, too - not proud about it.
so much on travel and exploration and identity and well, the ridiculous and the sublime, but put so muchu better than that - a worthy (re)read.
so much on travel and exploration and identity and well, the ridiculous and the sublime, but put so muchu better than that - a worthy (re)read.
June 23, 2023
Such a special, talented display of poetry. Masterful!
It has such an emotional range—that’s all I’ll say—you must experience this book!
It has such an emotional range—that’s all I’ll say—you must experience this book!
May 12, 2023
Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin by Jake Byrne, published by Wolsak & Wynn , 2023.
This collection of poetry is a fleet-footed fever dream, and one of the most staggering, breathtaking collections of poetry I’ve ever read.
Byrne’s poems are a hardcore and exceptionally powerful look at capitalism and the violence it inflicts on the human mind and body—especially queer bodies.
His words bite and tease, they ooze bawdiness and bodily fluids. They explore sexuality and our bodies as what’s exploited by the systems that control us, and what could ultimately free us from it.
There were so many times reading these pages I had to put the book down and breathe.
My head is still spinning.
The last section, HOMONATIONAL ANTHEM, was like a punch to the gut; a kiss planted full on the mouth, unexpected.
Byrne’s writing is just so gorgeously, unrepentantly hungry—for truth, connection, love, freedom. I think it speaks to the starving places in us all.
A must-read!
“My mother told me my mind was a dirty mirror / But I know no surface reflects like fire. / So hold my hand. We must move fast. Grab only what you need. / The tower between this world and the next is being built / That’s why it hurts this much to live here, and to bleed.”
—from “Cloud of Unknowing.”
.
This collection of poetry is a fleet-footed fever dream, and one of the most staggering, breathtaking collections of poetry I’ve ever read.
Byrne’s poems are a hardcore and exceptionally powerful look at capitalism and the violence it inflicts on the human mind and body—especially queer bodies.
His words bite and tease, they ooze bawdiness and bodily fluids. They explore sexuality and our bodies as what’s exploited by the systems that control us, and what could ultimately free us from it.
There were so many times reading these pages I had to put the book down and breathe.
My head is still spinning.
The last section, HOMONATIONAL ANTHEM, was like a punch to the gut; a kiss planted full on the mouth, unexpected.
Byrne’s writing is just so gorgeously, unrepentantly hungry—for truth, connection, love, freedom. I think it speaks to the starving places in us all.
A must-read!
“My mother told me my mind was a dirty mirror / But I know no surface reflects like fire. / So hold my hand. We must move fast. Grab only what you need. / The tower between this world and the next is being built / That’s why it hurts this much to live here, and to bleed.”
—from “Cloud of Unknowing.”
.
October 31, 2023
He’s certainly got an ear, and a style, but it can get awfully pretentious after a while. Like, I get it: you’ve been around the world and you-you-you know an awful lot of big words and terms. And the geopolitical stuff fell flat for me. (Really 3.5 stars.)
June 16, 2025
This was fine but definitely not massively accessible, in my personal opinion, personally, as a person,
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews