We don’t need your biofuel: how discrimination can hamper scientific research of global significance
Amy Ekins-Coward

When my wife and I first met, she told me
"This is my PhD, and
someday, my work will likely take me away –
abroad,
you know?"

Sure. So, there she was –
Chemical Engineering, Marine Biology crossover
– pretty unique, no? Developing
biofuel, no more worthy a cause that I know
and soon we were close
to her viva, to the rest of our lives
but
when she passed (minor corrections only,
no small feat), we sought out
where we ought to go,
she for work, with me in tow;
and while her colleagues span a globe,
chose money, sunshine, opportunity,
we began to see her atlas close.

No same-sex visa means no me,
means here’s a person
who could literally change the world,
who could bring forward the potential
for a viable, affordable, alternative fuel, but
hey – your government disagrees with these
sexualities, identities.

Think
of all the progress going unmade
because you are excluding two percent
of the candidates.

"Sure, we could cure cancer
but Andersson’s a queer
we don’t want him over here, and
yes Aitkins could be valuable too but
what can we do when she just won’t screw
the right way?"

"Fuck it all, bring on the floods, the epidemics,
the droughts, because
the gays need keeping out, away
think of all that moral decay
granting equal rights would sway
our children, we need role models –
Adam and Eve, not
Professor Beckwith if he’s bedding Steve.
He can keep his research,
we’ll keep our disease."

Every chance I get in the States,
I tell them what my wife creates and
how two years ago, we wouldn’t be allowed to move
and isn’t that crazy, don’t we prove
how important equal rights are? I hope they tell others,
I hope the word travels far
that we’re not perverts, or rapists, or deviants, we are
married, a scientist, a volunteer –
improving your planet, keeping it queer.

Amy Ekins-Coward is from North East England and presently lives in Honolulu, Hawaii. She was awarded a 2013 Northern Writers Award, a Northumbria University MRes Creative Writing fee-waiver scholarship, and her first chapbook, Nonplaced, was published by erbacce press.

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