On If They Put Us in Gay Jail by Noni Williams
By Jewell Rodgers
My name is Jewell Rodgers and today I bring you the poems of Noni Williams. Noni is one of my favorite people. I met her in Omaha, Nebraska.
Noni Williams is a senior cloud data engineer, a teaching artist, an independent data consultant, a storyteller, a mathematician, a philosopher, and of course - a performance poet - born and raised in North Omaha, Nebraska. As a queer, Black person in the Midwest, she has created an intentional space for self expression in her approach to mathematics, in her poetry, through fashion, and collaborations with artists in her community. Noni is an incredible multi-disciplinary, with the ability to impact many people teaching and lifting them up through many, many avenues.
This is her poem.
If They Put Us In Gay Jail
If they put us in gay jail
I wonder if they’ll give you a gay little sweatsuit you can crop
You’ll cut the sleeves to show off your arms
All of your push and pull ups tallied into lanky muscle fibers
Counting the days since top surgery and noodle arms
If they put us in gay jail
I’ll miss you flexing in the big mirror
I’ll miss you dancing like an 80s video vixen and your headphone sound turned up so high, I can sing along a room away
I’ll miss taking too long to make dinner with you by candlelight because we got caught up in each other’s eyes
And reading overdue library books on the riverfront, holding hands and prosecco poured into plastic cups
If they put us in gay jail
I wonder if they’ll split us up
They won’t have an agender, gender queer, non binary section
No familiar folds for identities they deem origamied out of banned words
So maybe they’d keep us together
And maybe they’d call us girl and she and her
But I would know your name however you were called
It would always sound like how the light sounds on nights when the moon is full
Sharp rays rounded
Filed down by craters light years through space
Persistent in the purest way
If they put us in gay jail
I wonder if they’ll let me write you poems
Or if I’ll have to recite them until they’re memorized
Pass them to cell mates, whispered over blacktops or sod yard (you think they’ll let us touch grass still?)
Hoping the songs make their way to your ears
That you’ll know I’m the librettist to our opera of rebellion when you hear my words on their lips
I know you would find me like how young sunflowers and their heliotropic heads find the sun
If they put us in gay jail
I wonder if our neighbors will look away like they do when ICE comes to town and some packing plants send workers home early to beat the raid and libraries in the South of our segregated town close to keep the mercenaries out
Like they do when an investigation and a search warrant means the Douglas Country Sherriff Office can kill a young man on his graduation day and the news won’t call it murder
Like they do when they hear another update about Adriana Smith who has lost her name
Who has become “brain dead woman”
Who has been Frankensteined into experiment and illogical incubator
Like they do when they hear about what happened to Nex Benedict and Jax Gratton and Sam Nordquist and
I tell you I lift heavy for sports
To maintain my body as I age
I tell myself I need to be able to carry your body if I need to
When I run, I imagine all of the ways I may have to get home to you
And how I would not rest until I can hug you so tight
We could shuffle our ribs together like playing cards
If they put us in gay jail
I hope to know we did all that we could to fight
Used with Permission
Oh, I love this poem. What I love about this poem is how it holds so many tones at once—playful, tender and deeply urgent. It starts almost lighthearted, imagining “gay jail” like it could be a joke between lovers, with cropped sweatsuits and noodle arms. But quickly, it becomes clear this isn’t just a game. It’s about longing, separation, and the fear of what institutions can take away from people. What people can take away from people.
I love how personal it is—missing someone’s dancing, their flexing, taking too long to make dinner together. These are the small, ordinary intimacies that make up a life. The poem makes them feel defiant at some point. And then, the imagery swells—your name becoming “how the light sounds on nights when the moon is full”— a beautiful combination.
What makes it so sharp is how it braids the personal with the political. Suddenly, “gay jail” isn’t just fantasy, it’s connected to the lives of everyday people enduring right now.
It asks us to see how silence and looking away are also part of the punishment – the jail.
The poem builds into a vow: training the body, carrying the weight, running as rehearsal for love and protection. Absolutely beautiful and romantic, that image—hugging so tight you could shuffle ribs like cards—a perfect combination of survival and closeness at once.
By the end, what stays is both fear and defiance: “I hope to know we did all that we could to fight.” The poem is love as resistance, love as preparation, love as proof. It shows us that tenderness can also be rebellion.
I’m Jewell Rodgers, State Poet of Nebraska.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Jewel Rodgers is the 2025–2029 Nebraska State Poet, a 2025 Academy of American Poets Fellowship recipient, and a 2025 AIRIES Fellow. A three-time Omaha Entertainment and Arts Award nominee for Best Performance Poet and a three-time TEDx speaker, she is a nationally touring interdisciplinary performer and spatial practitioner. Jewel merges art, storytelling, and placemaking to inspire and connect audiences across the U.S. and beyond. https://www.jewelrodgers.com/ (Bloom)
FEATURED POET
NONI WILLIAMS is a senior cloud data engineer, a teaching artist, an independent data consultant, a storyteller, a mathematician, a philosopher, and of course - a poet - born and raised in North Omaha, Nebraska. As a queer, Black person in the Midwest, she has created an intentional space for self-expression in her approach to mathematics, in her poetry, through fashion, and collaborations with artists in her community. Noni is an incredible multi-disciplinary, with the ability to impact many people teaching and lifting them up through many avenues. https://recorder-armadillo-4aam.squarespace.com/about
