The LGBTQ Campus Resource Center hosted its quarterly open mic night Tuesday afternoon, providing a platform for students to share poetry and other spoken artworks.

The intimate event was held on the second floor of the John Wooden Center in a room overlooking Bruin Walk. The sunset cast a warm, cozy glow through the large windows. LGBTQ+ flags adorned the room’s walls, bolstering the space’s energy of inclusivity and safety.

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Jaime Estepa, the LGBTQ CRC’s program coordinator and a UCLA alumnus, and Mary Nassar, a third-year English student and programming assistant intern, welcomed attendees to start the event. Estepa reviewed the event guidelines, which he said were adapted from Sunday Jump – a community arts organization in Los Angeles.

“One of their guidelines is free speech but not hate speech,” Estepa said. “So say whatever you want to say, and then let’s just treat everybody with respect. … Do whatever you want to do on the mic to express yourself, whatever feels good. We’re here to just share space in the community over our pieces of art.”

Four people performed during the event, sharing their poetry and several zines. The topics ranged from political climate and emotional resilience to body image and gender identity to love and interpersonal relationships.

It was third-year African American studies student Chiara Mask’s first time performing at this event, they said. They distributed their zines, which featured hand-drawn cartoon-style artwork, for the audience to read along. The zines, titled “Toothpaste” and “Dysmorphia,” depicted Mask’s experiences with body dysmorphia, gender dysphoria and romantic relationships. Masks’s artwork and playful readings elicited laughs and snaps of personal connection and identification from the audience.

Nassar shared a poem they wrote for OutWrite, UCLA’s queer news magazine. In her poem, she described facing a fraught, bleak political landscape marked by violence and greed and pondered how students are supposed to navigate these conditions. Nassar ended the poem on a more hopeful note, as they imagined dismantling corrupt institutions and rebuilding a society founded on connection and truth.

“Community care and community building … has always saved us before and is the only thing that will save us forevermore,” Nassar said. “We are all connected by our shared and vastly different joys and pains, where we are all equals, all companions along the journey, all of our unique collective histories and experiences to share.”

This theme of shared experiences was prominent throughout the open mic event. The evening concluded with Estepa performing one of their poems about queer family, or chosen family in the form of LGBTQ friendships, titled “I Want to Marry My Friends.” He described the sacred, profound bonds of his platonic relationships – how they are there for each other in sickness and in health – and discussed the bittersweet experience of friend groups moving apart as they embark on the next chapters of their lives.

“Our spirits converge and merge into one another, a spontaneous combustion, a miracle that defies fate, a reckoning that perhaps some of the most tender and juicy and wild and intimate moments I’ve shared have been with the homies,” Estepa said.

The audience members snapped their fingers, laughed and vocally expressed how the evening’s four performances resonated with them. These responses emphasized the atmosphere of mutual understanding, support and connection that permeated the space.

The LGBTQ CRC holds biweekly Queer Creative Writing spaces at the center Wednesdays from 4 to 5:30 p.m. during even weeks. Students are invited to come write, hang out, meet new friends and, give and receive feedback on their creative writing pieces. The center also hosts a Queer and Trans Black, Indigenous, People of Color (QTBIPOC) Affinity space Fridays from 3 to 4 p.m., where individuals can express themselves creatively and foster empowerment.

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“Poetry has never been a luxury,” Nassar said during her performance, quoting poet and writer Audre Lorde.

They emphasized the crucial, transformative power of art, adding, “The liberation of all people and the ability of all people to love and thrive together has always been something worth fighting for.”