

MOLLYHOUSE

Issue One

Edited by

Raymond Luczak

Squares & Rebels

Minneapolis, MN

***
COPYRIGHT

The artwork ("My Heart Breathes For You") on the cover is by Yusuf Yahya. [Image description: A painting shows an African-American person against a solid background embracing a huge heart containing a blue sky filled with many small clouds. The person's chest, arms, hands, and nails reveal a complex interplay of these colors: black, gray, and cream. Only the bottom of the person's face is shown while the painting is framed in solid black with the name MOLLYHOUSE set in white with a wispy mustache-like ornament beneath it with the words ISSUE ONE centered and set in red underneath the ornament.]

Individual contributors in this issue own the full copyright to their respective work. Please contact the editor directly via  email) if you're unable to reach a certain writer via the links provided in their bios.

Mollyhouse comes out twice a year. Submission guidelines can be found at mollyhouse.org.

SMASHWORDS LICENSE STATEMENT

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the editor (with the individual contributors retaining copyright to their own work), and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

***
CONTENTS

Editor's Note

Brenton Cross

Denise Leto

Allen Smith

Stephanie Heit

Mark Ward

Chael Needle

Scott Wiggerman

Kathi Wolfe

Eric Thomas Norris

William Reichard

Julene Tripp Weaver

Stuart Barnes

Theodore Cornwell

M.J. Arcangelini

Walter Holland

Philip Dean Walker

Arthur Durkee

Gregg Shapiro

Denise Duhamel

Joseph L. Cumer

Ron Mohring

Petra Kuppers

David Cummer

Cher Finver

Mike James

Jee Leong Koh

Steve Cordova

Scott Hightower

Alfred Corn

Don Cellini

Sean J. Mahoney

Victor Barnuevo Velasco

Dustin Brookshire

Diane R. Wiener

George K. Ilsley

Contributor Bios

***
RAYMOND LUCZAK

EDITOR'S NOTE

The Internet is a weird beast. It can be filled with monstrous people trying to sway voters, or it can offer links to intriguing articles, like this one about  mollyhouses. As something of a history buff, I was utterly fascinated by this slice of gay history.

I kept wondering what it was really like back then to deal with such an oppressive society. Then I had a startling realization. Even though things have vastly improved for LGBTQ people and other marginalized communities since then, those in power who oppressed the "mollies" back then are _still_ the masters of oppression today: the white hearing able-bodied heterosexual cisgender man.

Everyone in this issue is anyone but him.

After having had such a wonderful time editing the queer fiction journals _Jonathan_ and _Callisto_ (thank you, Bryan!), I sorely missed the excitement of reading amazing unpublished pieces and being the first to bring them out to the world. It's my hope that you'll discover the same thrill of discovery I had when reading these wonderful writers for this issue. Stay safe and healthy, my friends, and enjoy.

***
BRENTON CROSS

TRAPPED IN A FORM

It done now, it's over the time it come.

Color should not determine my worth

Oh the burden, seeking, living for some

I am a man, black man, born from the earth.

I breathe the air of my stained loss today

Garvey, Marley, McKay, immortal words

Shaping the soul, stirring, wiping away

Empty solace, flying the earth like birds

Laying on the altar, a move, to learn

Mistrust, great rage, burning intent to hate

Sullen, broken, nothing to say to earn

Bruised and, blocked from entering the white gate.

Charred beyond recognition couched in fear

Ghoulish silhouette of shame no one cares.

***
DENISE LETO

MYTHICAL MAP OF A ROOM

How long have you lived inside this candle?

I have lived inside this candle since you left.

It was cruel light in her mouth when they kissed.

Touch can be seen or unseen.

I will make you a desktop that looks like the night sky.

Your room will be a greenhouse.

I will keep you constantly under mist.

Feed your hands with my hands.

I will make things for you.

The skin just above your hips.

In your green eyes gathering.

Here are the oil paintings I made for you.

Here is the chair I carved.

And the opera I wrote.

I sewed a blanket for you.

I designed these shoes for you. Soft. Leather. Aubergine.

Black stitching on the tongue. Put them on.

I painted a room-size ocean for you.

I held you when you jumped into the bucket of snails.

I drew a turquoise cave. Your initials in the overlay.

You will never be cold.

I will make things for you.

I will make things for you.

I made this for you.

***
ELSEWHERE: A PLACE

The time her eyes looked like doorknobs

and once like sand crabs.

Count the poison dandelions,

pretend they are locks of hair.

Take your shoes off, your blouse, your cantilever.

Play the broken part: apart.

Needles, bottles, brother.

Future, tender, liar.

Hello bone urethra.

Hello stellar coroner.

Hello chipped nail polish.

If and if and then.

***
THE ARCHAIC FRAME OF BODY

Bone as an exhalation of form

glass stained by glass

Time as a mirror of negation

no help in the heap of surrender

Home as a parlor of fish

the yard in your world in duress

Words are unfavorable to infinity

we could not have known what leaving would mean.

***
ALLEN SMITH

FLY

Fly that I liberated from my house,

that would not believe I approached

with good intent,

that left only when I banged on the window

opposite the balcony's open sliding glass door,

that had somehow gotten in

in the first place,

had entrapped itself,

you have not seen all the states

my house has been in,

myself swatted from behind,

the hitter's buzzes

staggering him into the wall

as you had hit yourself against closed windows,

as though for escape,

like when he and I spread our legs

like wings,

our pulses flying,

me no longer hiding

my transparent parts,

windows that feet once met,

broken as your perfect legs

once house-broken,

then off somewhere,

who knows where,

through the air.

***
HE LIKED HIS MAN IN A GREEN DRESS

His words were the cure,

though that sounds absurd.

They were the cure.

They were.

He borrowed words

from Chaucer,

Fyodor,

and other authors.

I came to him

with a heart

shaped all irregular

from hurt.

My father hated me

for being other,

tried to smother

out her.

I found a green dress.

It was to twirl in.

You should buy it, mother,

I said, knowing I would try it on,

like him, forever.

***
STEPHANIE HEIT

NET CASE

I'm an external lung, silver shine & space bar clean in its peck peck. I'm a chicken cooped to the ethers. An astronaut sitting in this ergonomic chair star gazing into some triple w address. Zoom takes my breath, saves it in the chat. The world is at my fingertips in the 13" screen, but I lose my mind. Use every search engine to locate it. I didn't back up my memory. Mapquest offers no directions when I type, _I'm lost!_ I shutdown & cry electric tears. Wake to a full inbox. Cursorily scroll down. I hear it's a sunny day from my duly reporting widget. Facebook generates an algorithm to share: the best day of my life.

***
GEOSYNCHRONOUS ORBITS (GSO)

early November light

bench by the river

I forget we are spinning

weight settles at my center

head tossed into breeze

dried leaf xylophone

air warmer than usual

earth tilts away from sun

ushers in winter

the river flows faster

pouring out of a pitcher

what if my brain rotates

its own planet

loose in skull & cerebral juice

left hemisphere changes to right

reptilian limbic system

gets a front row seat

I am slither & hunt

attuned senses primed

it would go clockwise

I'm in the Northern Hemisphere

brains in the Southern Hemisphere

would spin the other direction

of course

today I don't worry

that the ground will move

away from my feet

or gravity will hang on my shoulders

like a bright orange life

jacket out of lead

***
MARK WARD

HIBERNATING

The light is too thin in winter

leaving the dark corners their secrets.

I still my body and breathe myself cold.

Air always on the edge of sleet.

I'm inhaling small crystals of ice,

grazing my throat for the sake of freshness.

Each day makes its quiet blinding.

The exhausted light whines through the panes.

I wrench the fat from myself and I eat

the memories we made. I wait

for summer's involuntary heat

to unearth me, one brushstroke at a time.

***
CRITICISM

In my copy of _Strong Measures_ ,

a collection of formal poems,

its last owner took great pleasure

in annotating the syndrome

where the rhymes betray their ending,

becoming slant, beholden, gaunt.

He read aloud, nothing landing,

underlining, a red-penned rant.

An elective he was made take,

these poems seem to fall apart.

Not what his mother liked to read

before the cancer had taken

hold. Her endless and then abrupt

end. Words uprooted like a weed.

***
SUPPLICANT

Mafdet stalks the chamber. The snake she preys

upon escapes. She returns to her praise,

curled at his feet, a sentry. She's a god

but thinks there's something in this form of praise-

giving oneself to an invocation.

She imitates the way the humans pray,

their fingers interlaced, eyes closed in awe.

Behind this lid bejewelled in gold and prase,

a mortal body decays. The pharaoh

tempered her, perceiving the need to praise

those who worshipped him. And her. He would

explain their confusing requests in prayers—

Please make me rich. Please let her love me back.

Such petty concerns displayed by the prey,

her playthings. He stopped that too, amusing

her himself. Even gods can love, can praise,

but a mortal body decays. The gods

have been too long removed from direct praise.

Another snake slithers in. She lets it,

leaves him in search of worship to appraise.

***
CHAEL NEEDLE

ROCKS FOR JOCKS

Charlie climbed to the top of the Taj Mahal. He could not climb any higher. It was not an Eiffel Tower day.

He paused the stair-climbing machine, one of three at the campus gym, and backed down the steps, his sweaty hands slipping on the glossy plastic-made-to-look-like-metal railings.

Heel on the floor and toe on the base of the machine, he pressed each foot, one at a time, against the ungiving surface to stretch his shins, an old habit from his running days to repair or prevent splints. He felt the tension in his lower legs contract and dissipate as he applied pressure. He did not feel any out-of-ordinary pain—he had not overdone it. He was wise to stop when he did. Let others have their Eiffel Towers and their perfectly-toned bodies.

He tried to do stairs at the end of every workout, but some days, especially after one of his social work grad seminars or skimming articles on microfiche at the library, he was too tired to climb very high and he had to chase away the voices that shamed the limits of his endurance and strength. The voices were determined to see him collapse dead on a machine before ever going silent.

He mopped his face with his towel, flicking the soft whiskers of his dark beard back and forth. By the time he looked up again, his accomplishments on the digital display—the pixelated outline of the Taj Mahal above the words "240 feet"—had flicked off. No record kept, except in his memory, except in his body.

It was just as well that he finished early because some days, like today, this part of the gym, the airless, windowless basement devoted mostly to free weights, became overrun by undergraduate testosterone. He had once been an undergrad here too, but these men, some of them seven or eight years younger, seemed more determined about working out than he remembered his set had been. Team or no team, everyone seemed to want to be a jock.

Already the gym had become crowded and the scrape-and-clank percussion of the gym equipment amplified in echoes. The young men studied themselves in the mirrors, their physiques at full-length, their muscles, in isolation. They studied their spiral-bound workout logs, the pages crinkled by long-dried sweat. They studied their forms when lifting and, when not lifting, they studied the racks of weights for the one they needed to balance out a bar. The men studied each other with quick, casual glances, never admiring without also comparing.

In that cement-block room, painted in wall-wrapped bands of purple and gold, Charlie wanted to check them out, too, but not for their reasons and not furtively. Not like Simon over there, stationed on the elliptical. He knew Simon would never leave, now that the boys had piled in. Simon would be easy-pedaling his machine for hours. Never sweating, always gazing. Never making his heart work that hard.

Charlie wanted to be open to detecting signals of love and desire, wanted to approach any number of these men with a smile and a joke, or invite them to approach him, but since nothing like that would probably ever happen, he preferred to leave. He would leave them to their task, copying each other, correcting each other.

Charlie had no interest in the wisdom they sought: How to Become a Man. Not because he was already a man. But because he had long ago promised to himself that he never would be.

As a middle-schooler, he joined track. He did not want to disappoint his father, who had goaded him to lose weight. So, in the chlorinated stink of the locker room, he pulled on his new sneakers, with their floppy, too-white laces, and tried to make his body do what the others could make their bodies do.

At practice, the runners would loop through the housing tracts near the middle school, a pack of twenty or so boys at a steady, charging pace. Charlie could never keep up, not even with his friend Kevin, and ended up stranded on strange streets, slowing to a jog so that his fat did not bounce as much, as he chuffed along.broo

His nipples would chafe against his T-shirt every single time he ran. He stopped complaining about how much they hurt. You were not supposed to complain about the body in distress. He learned that lesson when he told his father about the sore rawness of his breasts— _don't call them that_ —and his father chastised him with, _No pain, no gain_.

Charlie would rub his nipples at night in bed, tentatively, the perfumed lotion stinging where the skin had cracked. He did not know how to tend to his wounds. He lived with the scabs and the tearing of the scabs.

Only when his tutor Mike, a high-schooler, noticed the pin-prick blood stains on his T-shirt one evening did he find relief. Charlie told him what was happening, adding, _No pain, no gain_ , _right?_ Mike shook his head and simply said, _Band-Aids. Before you run. Put the pad right on here_. Mike touched his own nipple through the thin cotton fabric of his white Oxford. Charlie giggled under the light of the faux Tiffany lamp suspended above the dining room table where they worked. It was the first time his brain revolted. He did not have to endure cruelty. He did not have to deny tenderness. He did not have to be a man.

Collecting his hand towel and water bottle, Charlie strolled to the exit and passed by Simon. Charlie nodded hello, but Simon barely acknowledged him—a curt _hey_ that no one else could possibly notice.

At Private Eyes, Simon paid Charlie heaps of attention, shrieking hellos from across the dance floor as if they were almost-lovers or almost-best friends. Near the bar, on tiptoe, Simon would whisper beer-sloshed promises of delight in Charlie's ear. Squeeze Charlie's muscles for no good reason. He would repeat his lame pick-up line, "Simon says: Give me a kiss."

Charlie never took him up on his standing offer. Not because he found Simon physically unattractive, but because he knew that, to Simon, he did not exist in the world outside of the bars. Everywhere he could be, Charlie was out. Driving a red Toyota whose rear bumper was plastered with rainbows and peace symbols. Correcting the heterosexist assumptions of his professors as they lectured. Holding hands with guys on Lark Street. Wearing workout clothes to the gym that were too brightly colored.

_Charlie can get away with all that_ , thought Simon, _because he looks like a man_.

Charlie had been Simon once, wearing the plainest of uniforms years ago when he had first arrived at college, out to his friends, but never flying the colors of his flag. He would spend his spare time in the dorm rooms of guys he had crushes on, lounging on their beds, reading their _Penthouses_ or rooting through their care packages from home, looking for chocolate pretzels but settling for homemade Chex mix with its stale, crumbly M&Ms, or listening to their petulant manifestos about The World and How It Should Be—or Else Someone's Going to Be Mighty Sorry!

Nothing ever came of the hours he put in, not really. Dalliances, when they happened, never had the thrill of his fantasies. The men were often dead-drunk, and romance staggered through a vulgar burlesque. The men would lay there in the meager light of desk lamps, their bodies impassive and immovable. It reminded Charlie of a tattered paperback he found in his mother's nightstand—tales of women raped by ghosts, the victims frozen in their beds as spirits hovered above them, the promise of pleasure intermixed with violation. Charlie did not much like feeling disembodied. Floating near the men but not truly touching them. He wanted them to see him. None of them ever did.

Until Ronnie.

Second year of college, the Fall '93 semester, in the sun-deep shallows of an October day, Ronnie cruised Charlie in the student union lounge, where, at lunchtime, above the din of the cafeteria ballooning up through the giant double stairwells that connected one floor and the next, clusters of students would huddle on the purple-and-gold-carpeted expanse and pore over the same daily _New York Times_ crossword.

Five or six puzzles might be going at any one time. It was light-hearted fun that required serious attention. No one had to think critically, only recall memorized facts, relieved for a time from the Socratic method of their professors. Every clue could be unraveled and no one had to feel the pressure of being called on in class.

Right answers would produce boastful giggles and blatant secrecy. Revelations would provoke furious erasures of ink. In friendly battle, the puzzlers would lob hints and questions across the lounge.

Charlie and Ronnie, each in their own little gangs and disconnected beyond this midday confederacy, started to share their own hints and questions with each other, but these were spoken with the slowness of eyelashes and the curl of lips into smiles that punctuated some sugared thought.

They did not compare themselves with each other. They were not satisfied with admiring each other. They wanted to give the other pleasure.

_"Grief-built monument's city_." Twelve-Across. That was the clue the groups bandied about.

At first, when Ronnie started to mouth a message to him, Charlie thought he was trying to feed him the answer, which he already knew but had not revealed. _Agra_. The Taj Mahal had been built by an emperor, Shah Jahan, as a mausoleum for his favorite wife, who had died after the difficult birth of their fourteenth child. Its city was Agra. But Ronnie's lips did not seem to be articulating the right answer.

"What?" Charlie mouthed back, his brows knit.

It took repeated attempts before Ronnie gave up on words and pantomimed his question, bringing pinched fingers to his lips, sucking deep, making his eyes go drowsy. _Want to smoke a joint?_

Charlie nodded, translating what this question from the cute guy with the Robin Hood smirk across the way really meant: _Want to hook up?_

The two men did not know each other, but they knew the drill. They must leave separately. They must be apart for a time before they could be together. If both had been out, they could have left together, suffering the knowing nods and elbow-nudging grins of their friends. If neither had been out, they might have risked leaving at the same time without anyone noticing. Since Charlie was out, and Ronnie was not, they had to be careful.

Ronnie left first. Charlie waited a good ten minutes (in fact, only three) and stood up, made his excuses to his friends, collected their empty yogurt cups and granola bar wrappers for disposal, and offered them the answer as a parting gift: _Agra. That's where the Taj Mahal is located_. He wouldn't have to explain anything else—they knew the backstory. They gasped and thanked him. Their excitement as they wrote down the word in the puzzle and checked for what it added to other clues distracted them from wondering about his sudden exit.

Charlie jogged down the stairs to the cafeteria and, through the crenellation of tall windows, no wider than arrow-slits, that spanned the western wall, he spotted Ronnie outside in one of the dusty gravel beds.

Ronnie looked up as Charlie jerked open the windowed door and escaped the rabble of the students in the cafeteria. His eyes brightened. He turned and began walking away. He never looked back again.

They marched in single file, spaced fifty yards apart at first, for quite a long time, beyond the concrete jigsaw of columns and benches of Colonial Quad, one of four dormitory towers, toward the athletics complex, a new building of green glass and white stone that sat like a gleaming shipwreck below Parking Lot B on its artificial plateau. Charlie wondered where Ronnie was leading him—to the semi-private courtyard behind the student gym? To the shuttle bus stop? To his car?

The heat of the sun spun its prickly spell around Charlie. He took a risk. He stopped following Ronnie and took a shortcut through a stand of pines, their soft, fanning bristles brushing against his chest.

As he emerged on the other side, he could no longer see Ronnie, only male and female students in workout gear heading toward or away from the gym.

He darted to the stairs and ascended them, taking the steps by twos. At the top, he stopped short at the edge of the parking lot.

Charlie scanned the tops of cars, reflecting the light. The light hurt his eyes. He could not see him. He blinked away the flares that pulsated in his vision. He steadied the sadness trembling within him, ready to be upbeat about disappointment.

Then he spotted him. Ronnie's head bobbing above the shining metal.

Ronnie stopped, turned, and searched for him, too.

Charlie ran, swiveling his hips as he navigated the cars, missing the sharp and rounded edges of their bodies by inches. He closed the distance, thrilled as he realized Ronnie had a car. They could go anywhere.

Slowing, Ronnie placed the palm of his hand on the hood of a red Toyota, announcing to Charlie, silently, that they had arrived at their destination. Soon they were standing on either side of the car, hands on door latches, like any old couple.

Seated side by side, they checked the cars around them for signs of life and then, when they were assured no one was about, they turned toward each other and kissed. It was a short kiss—maybe three or four minutes long—but plump and wet with promise. Tongue orbited tongue, testing out the pull of gravity.

They touched down on a newborn planet, crawling with lava flows.

"What is your name?" Charlie asked when they broke away from each other. He wanted to start this right. Maybe Ronnie had the same idea. He did.

"Ronnie. And your name is—"

"Charlie."

"I knew that," Ronnie said, smiling, as he drove to the nearest exit. "I asked someone—your name."

"You have absolutely no interest in crosswords, do you?"

Ronnie laughed as he shook his head, "They're too friggin' hard!"

"They're not, after a while. They use the same words over and over. _Lea_ —l-e-a—is 'meadow.' _Agora_ —"

_"A_ —what?"

_"Agora_ ," Charlie said, pronouncing it more slowly. "Marketplace."

"Right, like who knows that?"

"No one outside of Greece. That's what I'm saying. If you do crosswords enough times, you learn all the words they use to make everything connect."

Ronnie nodded. He felt self-conscious about the kiss. He was convinced he did not know how. No man in those parking lots of his teenage years had wanted to kiss.

Cranking the radio against the wind gusting through the opened windows, Ronnie remained silent on the curving road that encircled the campus. At the exit, with its Home of the Great Danes sign, emblazoned by ribbons of purple and gold, he took a right onto Western instead of a left.

Charlie sighed but quieted his excitement. A left meant downtown. Right, the countryside. They might be lovers. They would be friends, at least. They were bound for adventure.

"You don't mind being gone a bit, do you, Charlie? Or do you need to get back for class?"

"It's okay. I can skip Geology."

"Rocks for Jocks?"

It was not Ronnie's joke—Charlie had heard the course's dismissive nickname before—but it was still clever. "Hey, I run track."

"You're different, though."

"I'm not really offended. I get it. They cram 500 students into a lecture hall and call it learning."

Ronnie checked his rear-views and shifted lanes to meet the red light. "I don't have my flashcards with me but I can still test you. Ready? 'Igneous.'"

"What?" Charlie felt comfortable enough to turn down the C+C Music Factory song playing on the radio.

"Come on, I may not know that _leah_ is a meadow—"

_"Lea_. No 'ah.'"

"—I may not know what _lea_ is but I know some things. What's the definition of 'igneous'? How about 'magma'?" He blurted out the only geology terms he remembered from ninth-grade Earth Science.

"Magma," Charlie repeated in a jokey baritone.

"Mag-ma." Ronnie pressed the accelerator for emphasis.

"Magma."

They giggled as if they were already high, their words unloosed from boxes.

Their next kiss, impromptu, at a stoplight in the middle of the pine bush far beyond the strip of family-style restaurants and motels for visiting parents, burned molten-hot as it spilled from their lips.

"You're so incredibly sexy," Charlie said.

"I am?"

"And you're a great kisser!"

"Don't tell my pillow, okay? He'll be jealous." Ronnie could not stop seeing the sun everywhere.

They both wanted the afternoon to flow where it would, hot and liquid, and then cool down and solidify into some new shape.

*

"Do you know where you're going?" Charlie asked as they drove.

"Nope." Ronnie had hoped to find a deserted cemetery, where they could smoke the joint in his front-shirt pocket, but, as they sped down the road, all they passed were office campuses and stone-wall entrances to neighborhoods tucked away behind old-growth trees.

"At the light up here, bear right. Let's go out to Indian Ladder Farms. We'll go apple picking," Charlie said, hoping it didn't sound too much like a date even though he wanted it to be a date. "It'll be empty at this time of day and no one will disturb us in the orchard."

"How do you know about this place?" Ronnie asked.

"Grew up here. Not far from here."

"You didn't want to move away for college? You get along with your family?"

"No, I don't." Charlie answered the second question first. "I like the beauty and it's where I feel most at home. Do you know what I mean?"

"Totally."

"Why should I leave?"

"Exactly," Ronnie said, dismissing his own flight from Long Island, glad to know someone who had been braver than himself.

The road dipped and rose and unspooled through villages and strip malls and close to creaky houses that abutted the shoulder. It was all familiar to Charlie, from childhood trips to Thacher Park, high on the Helderberg escarpment west of Albany, where they picnicked and swam in the summer and viewed the colors in the fall, descending to the valley below to stop off at the apple orchard to munch on fryer-hot cinnamon doughnuts and sip mulled cider.

"Why should we leave? Exactly," Ronnie repeated, more to himself, as he noted what was new to him—a stand-alone meat market, a boarded-up soft-serve ice cream shack, a tiny church with a tiny steeple, all interspersed by dead and crackled corn fields.

Three weeks ago Ronnie had noticed Charlie, slumped on an armchair in the library, one leg loosely crossed over the other, reading a novel by Paulo Coelho. He watched for him every day after that. And, one day, when he had almost given up on ever seeing him again, his friend dragged him to lunchtime crosswords, and there Charlie was, lying on his back, arms arrowed, hands clasped behind his head, laughing with closed eyes.

"So, what's an 'Indian ladder'?"

"See that escarpment?" Charlie pointed to the land formation that rose out of the horizon, its flatness creating a foliage-thick table seven miles long with only some limestone exposed here and there.

"That's not, like, a mountain?"

"Not technically. See how it just rises, sharp-like?"

"Listen to you. Mag-ma."

"Magma." Charlie repeated, chuckling. "Anyway, in those cliffs is a trail that leads to the Indian Ladder. Where it used to be. The tribe that lived around here, they leaned a tree against one of the cliffs and climbed that to get back and forth. A shortcut, I guess. There's a waterfall you can walk under and caves in the rockface."

"We should hike that some time."

Ronnie's nod to the future was not lost on Charlie. "You can see where the Indian Ladder used to be from the farm—I think."

"You probably can. Why else would they name the farm that?"

Ronnie had at first thought to take him back to his dorm room, but the day seemed to demand something different. No, _Charlie_ demanded something different. He looked like a jock, but there was a gentleness about him, a narrowness of frame that made it seem like he could escape, Houdini-like, from the tightest of chains.

"Are you really going to make me pick apples?" Ronnie asked, his words feathered by laughter.

"We'll pretend." Charlie patted Ronnie's thigh and when he removed his hand Ronnie reached out and snatched it back. Touch felt right.

*

They swung their empty baskets as they hiked down rows of apple trees, away from the brown-shingled barns and buildings.

When the man at the outdoor counter had pointed out on a hand-drawn map where they could pick the ripest apples, they nodded and then they skedaddled in the opposite direction when he wasn't looking. Lovers skipping toward mischief.

The apples in this stretch of the orchard were as green as the leaves that shrouded them. Ronnie touched one as he passed but did not yank it off its branch. He only let the weight of it linger in his cupped palm.

In other rows, some apples lay brown and bruised on the ground, mass graves of putrid flesh. Charlie stopped and crouched to see if any apple could be rescued, but every one that looked ripe, when turned, turned out to be hiding its ghastliness.

He looked up. He could not see Ronnie. He could not see him anywhere. He stalked the trees, back and forth. His eyes parsed the branches in the distance for movement.

In a moment of desperation, he shouted his name. "Ronnie!" But Ronnie did not holler back. Charlie began to mistrust his ears. He thought perhaps his senses were working against him.

After five minutes of stamping about, his basket clunking against his thigh, he found Ronnie beyond the edge of the orchard, standing near a gnarled tree, short and squat and leafless, black-barked and lichen-knobbed, its slender trunk sheathed by swoops of tall wheat-like grass, forgotten in its deadness, and marking a boundary no one probably cared to mark.

Ronnie did not remark on the fact that they had been apart for the last few minutes. He had simply waited for him.

Ronnie lit up the joint and passed it to Charlie. They smoked.

Clouds reeled overhead, transforming the light of the sun into golden darkness every now and then. They stared at each other, at the marvel of bone and skin and blood, and how glittery emotions swam just below the surface. They expelled smoke out of the sides of their mouths.

In the meadow beyond the tree, small birds policed bare spots of ground for seeds. Rabbits tunneled through whorls of long grass. Ladybugs clung to wavering blades.

Charlie studied Ronnie, how he tamped out the joint with his fingers, the efficiency of it, and smiled at him. Then Charlie slid his arms around Ronnie and pulled him close, pulse against pulse. Ronnie pulled him down, awkwardly, but that mattered little in the urgency of their swoon.

They lounged on the grass and kissed. They stared at each other and kissed again. Charlie unbuttoned Ronnie's shirt. He kissed a trail down Ronnie's neck. He suckled his right nipple. Ronnie squirmed. He groaned. Charlie's tongue bathed his breast, ran laps around his nipple. Twisting his body half-round, Ronnie pressed his erect penis against Charlie's hipbone. He monitored the earth, the shivering of clover in the wind and the ants on their errands.

Ronnie had never wished for this kind of intimacy because he knew wishes never came true. Eighteen years seemed a long time to go without wishes. He wished for the first time.

Ronnie stopped Charlie, sitting up, his ears alert. He scrambled up, aright and standing, and he was able to button up his shirt by the time a young man and woman came around a tree, holding hands, baskets brimming with apples, and nodding _hello_ to them.

"We were wondering if you could see Indian Ladder from here," Ronnie blurted, gesturing to the escarpment. They had no idea what he was talking about. They couldn't answer. They smiled and moved on.

Charlie reached for Ronnie's hand but Ronnie turned from him, tears blurring his vision. The orchard melted and the branches of the trees became faint like veins of blood beneath the skin.

Charlie bounded up and hugged Ronnie from behind, whispering in his ear, "What's wrong?"

"I ruined the moment. I fucking blew it," he answered, the catch in his voice tightened by tears. "I ruined it."

"No, no. Nothing is set in stone."

"I thought when the time came, I'd be braver than that."

"Come on, now. Stop. Who knows who was coming around that tree? Could have been a pack of homophobes."

_"You_ didn't panic like a scaredy-cat."

"I had the thought, though: _Do they mean us harm?_ " Charlie rocked him softly, kissing the top of his head. "We've been trying to keep ourselves safe our whole lives. We're still trying to keep ourselves safe."

*

Alone in the locker room's communal shower, Charlie moved his body under a harsh stream that sputtered with the force of spite. His muscles rebounded from the workout. He stretched his back and arms with generous windmills in the humid air, whipping water outward onto the linoleum floor beyond the tiles.

He spotted Simon on a bench, not undressing but looking as if he might undress. Simon stared at him with a smile that he meant to mean anything but ending up meaning nothing.

"Come take a shower with me," Charlie said with a cheeky grin.

"Now?"

"Soap my back. I'll soap yours."

Simon stared at Charlie, not understanding why Charlie was teasing him. Charlie could not be serious. He was trying to humiliate him, somehow. Make him remove his T-shirt and reveal the acne on his back.

Charlie was not teasing him. Testing him, perhaps. Trying to wake him up.

"I'm not ready for my shower," Simon lied.

"No one is going to come in for a while. Let's have some fun."

"I'm not ready."

"What do you care about those guys anyway? They have zero experience in making love to a man," Charlie said softly. "Come here."

"I'm not desperate!"

"I am."

Desperate to make Ronnie laugh once more with his He-Man and Skeletor impressions. Desperate to stab the windows of the White House, now that his anger had finally sharpened.

Desperate to walk shoulder to shoulder with Ronnie, everywhere.

Charlie hated that Simon looked at him, because Simon could not see. He could not see Ronnie. Charlie did not blame Simon. No one seemed to be able to see Ronnie, even though he lived in every smile that broke across Charlie's face and in every sob that erupted from his throat and in every move Charlie tried out on the dancefloor.

No one wanted to recognize Charlie's widowhood, his mourning. No one wanted to see the Taj Mahal right in front of them.

Simon started to undress, but slowly. He pulled loose the knots on his sneakers as he glanced at Charlie.

Charlie, determined not to let Simon make him disappear and reappear at will, lathered up his hands with the orange drippy soap and kneaded every inch of his body. Everywhere that Ronnie had ever kissed. _He kissed me here. And here and here. Earlobe to kneecap. Every part of me_. Charlie slid his hands over every place Ronnie would never kiss again.

They never did have the chance to go look for the Indian Ladder, but they made the most of the time they didn't know they had left. They did not walk hand in hand around campus, and rarely touched in public, but any stranger who saw them knew they were together. And knew they were in love.

They spent mornings in bed, cuddling, their hands caressing cheeks, and shoulder blades, and napes of necks. Their hands wandered home.

Odd moments of any Saturday afternoon found them hugging each other in the kitchen, a sandwich half-made, a tomato unsliced, ribbons of Romaine wet on a paper towel, bread on a plate.

At night, they became expert at keeping their slow writhing bodies from falling off the twin bed.

Charlie wasn't asking people to see Ronnie in those awful end days in that hospital room, where the CMV ground his body to a halt. No, Charlie would keep those gentle, shrieking days away from their prying eyes. Ronnie's death was not his story. His fight to live was.

Under the shower, its warm spray starting to cool, Charlie pivoted this way and that, glancing down to make sure the water rinsed the soap off his buttocks and arms and calves.

Wrapping a towel around his waist, he passed near Simon. He paused, merriment in his heart, and whispered in his ear, "Magma."

Simon scowled and mumbled something like _weirdo_.

Charlie smiled. He hoped Simon would one day understand.

Dressed, sweaty gym clothes in a bag on his hip, Charlie hurried out of the athletics complex, heading toward Parking Lot B on its artificial plateau. He darted to the stairs and ascended them, taking the steps by twos. He climbed to the top of his grief. He could not climb any higher. It was not an Eiffel Tower day.

***
SCOTT WIGGERMAN

LOVE LETTER TO A NAKED STRANGER

I know you as intimately

as I've known any man.

Even days later I think of you.

Each stiff wisp rising

over your brow into the air,

each shadowy imprint

muscled into your limbs.

From the streetlights of your beard

through the haloes of your chest hair,

down the alleys of your thighs

to the dark between your toes,

I know every stroke of you.

I should. I created you

in my own image, only better,

not some monster puzzled

together out of odd parts.

A man of age and substance,

of beauty and imperfections,

but nameless as a blank canvas.

Blame the artist, blame me.

Is this not an act of love?

So why do I ponder ways

of further improving you—

line-defined abs,

more effervescence in your eyes,

a less contorted pose?

I fear it's too late.

Like every man, myself included,

I will have to learn to love

you as you are.

***
SPRING

starting with a Dickinson line (#1051)

I cannot meet the spring unmoved, I feel the old desire.

Green erupts before my eyes, birds return with bold desire.

Put behind those muzzy months of clouds and hazy grays.

The sun has wakened with a dull but cold desire.

Wildflowers arise in spectra of uncultivated colors.

Bees wallow drunkenly in ochre pollens—behold desire.

Spin in the wet meadow as the season turns and returns.

Make mud angels when it rains and try to mold desire.

The pond's fishy smell somehow feeds both mind and spirit.

Somewhere below the murky surface, an uncontrolled desire.

The sharp surprise tasting parsley's first sprig of green.

May I outlast another year of pushed and pulled desire.

Its mouth agape, the moon looms among a million stars.

You fool yourself when you think you might have cajoled desire.

Water, stone, leaf, fire: I feel connections in my bones,

but wonder which love is like—can it be foretold, desire?

***
KATHI WOLFE

THIS IS NOT A LOVE POEM

There were no lover's serenades, candle-lit

dinners, bridal trains, towering cakes,

solemn vows. One night, we dressed in torn

shorts, ripped tops, flip-flops. We'd forgotten

to clean the cat's litter box. The light bulb

above our heads went out. Next door

the neighbor's six-year-old played chop-sticks

on the piano. _Sure, let's get hitched_ , we said,

digging into the mac and cheese. We exchanged

Ring-Dings. Our tongues will never forget the taste.

***
WOLF DOG WHO COMES TO MY DREAMS

If only you were a respectable, heaven-sent spirit animal!

You'd bark in soothing earth tones. Careful, not to mess

my hair up, you'd gently hug me against your well-groomed fur.

Discreetly, you'd whisper words of comfort into my ear.

Quietly, never too late at night or in the middle of my dreams,

you'd guide me through the valley of the shadow,

show me how to wash my grief's dirty laundry, put

fabric softener in my anxiety. But you're a wild wolf dog.

Your matted fur is an ungodly orange with purple streaks.

Its mangy smell stays on my pillows. You awaken me

at dawn, playing bagpipes in an unearthly key. The sound

could knock walls down. I itch when you pat my head.

Yet, I need your discordant music, your unholy stench.

***
ERIC THOMAS NORRIS

TIME

Time is out. Time has a special pass.

Time comes and goes as Time pleases, playing

Peek-a-boo with the authorities,

Busybodies, brutes, and dread diseases.

Time wanders by me—the Sun on a leash.

The Sun, infinitely curious,

Touches everything with warmth, briefly.

Grass. Broken glass. A knot of dog-poop

In biodegradable brown. A great gutter

Stream—suddenly flush with gold—races

Down the street to the sewer, carrying

A portion of Creation, but not all.

A steel chain sparkles here. Clean windows there.

Purple glitter on a pigeon's neck.

Kit-Kat wrapper. Bent needle. Starbucks

Cup. Ice cubes carved from diamonds. You.

***
WILLIAM REICHARD

TCHAIKOVSKY, WRITING TO HIS NEPHEW, ON DEPRESSION, AND FINDING BEAUTY AMID THE WRECKAGE OF THE SOUL

There are dark days. Notes nightblack.

There are minor days, mournful,

marching at a funerary pace.

There are whole weeks, even months,

monotonous, punishing.

In those times, when I try to write music,

my imagination's erased. I become

a poet who has lost his language,

a sculptor with a silent stone.

If I could write such silence, it would be

a blank page, untroubled by notation.

But there's no music without darkness.

This is the price any of us gladly pay.

Despair begins in hopelessness, but then,

singing almost silently, hope. One faint note

ringing in my empty ears leads to another,

to a string, a phrase, and another phrase

to keep company with the first.

Writing music is a process of accrual,

layer after layer, built up until

the music's shell is brilliant and hard.

In those times of plenty, I pray

for release from my cycles of song

and silence. Up, then down.

My music comes at a cost.

I don't know who or what extracts it.

If there was any other way

to acquire the inspiration I need

to fuel me through another day,

I'd take it.

***
INTERIORS

To measure the exact amount of dust in the house,

multiply the number of days in isolation by

the number of rooms in your home, and divide

by the number of people in your home.

To gauge the number of days to be spent

sheltering in place, divide your current age

by the number of years you've been in

your current relationship, then add infinity.

To test your level of tolerance of another

human being, measure the time between

one hurtful word and the next, and multiply

that by your current level of fear of dying alone.

To determine if you will survive the pandemic,

measure your tolerance for doing nothing

against your tolerance for doing the same thing

over and over again, and multiply this by

the number of days since you last wore pants.

To discover if there is still a human being living

inside of you, cut open your chest, and count the number

of heartbeats per minute, then divide by the amount

of blood you are willing to spill in order to find the answer.

***
JULENE TRIPP WEAVER

HOW HIV CHANGED ONE WOMAN'S SEX LIFE

When I learned I was HIV positive on December 29, 1989, I knew exactly when I became infected and by whom. In 1989 an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence. People who took high doses of AZT were dying. They would improve a little then fail in cycles till there was nothing to bring them back. When the "gay cancer" started I was in the lesbian community and aware. I watched it spread, get renamed to GRID then HIV and AIDS, I watched it affect my friends and community.

But to talk about how HIV impacted my sex life I have to start back in the days of the sexual revolution.

Before meeting my first bonified lesbian in the mid-seventies I dated men. The two girlfriends I loved in high school would not reciprocate beyond kissing. Through early sexual encounters I was precocious and curious, and had to say no forcefully several times to men. In 1969, when I turned seventeen, I gave up my virginity with my first disappointing heterosexual intercourse.

After a few years I became engaged, I was in love and thought my "slut-years" were over. Then I felt my heart fall out of my chest when a handsome doctor started interning at the clinic where I worked. He was a married man, this appealed to me. I seduced him and we had an affair. It proved it was possible to love more than one person and confirmed I enjoyed having two relationships at the same time. If one lover was good, weren't two better? There is a long history of how this works, different people meet different needs. Plus, my moon resides in Gemini, two of everything is a familiar longing. Having two lovers fulfilled some deep need. Revealing this affair to my fiancé led to an open relationship. We explored swinging, had affairs, and I convinced him to call off our engagement and buy a car, it was a better way to spend our money than getting married.

By 1976, at twenty-four, I broke up with two men, my fiancé and a man I had an affair with who lived in Manhattan. That affair cemented my love for The City and provided the impetus to move. Once living in New York City, on Mott Street, I met a real lesbian who lived on West Charles. Despite the fact she had a girlfriend, I seduced her. She warned me I would fall in love, and said first loves were the ones women fell the hardest for. I fell and she broke my heart, breaking off with me to have a commitment ceremony with her main girlfriend.

After her, I immersed myself into the lesbian world for years before re-embracing my bisexuality. Making friends, frequenting gay bars I had women lovers and gay men friends; we traveled to Fire Island tea dances and frequented discos in The City. I went to the first Gay Rights march in Washington DC in 1979 and lived with a woman for a few years. Eventually I had a passionate affair with another woman who also broke my heart. Because I had experienced love and good sex with men and women, I felt bisexual but didn't think I'd be with a man again.

Meeting strong lesbians and reading feminist writings like Adrienne Rich's essay, "Compulsory Heterosexuality," epitomized my values. Fiercely political, being gay expanded my awareness of women and the roles they were entrained into in society. Relieved I had avoided marriage, I longed for stable love from a steady partner, or two.

After turning thirty, I signed up for wilderness training in remote Maine. This trip was my pilgrimage. I carried the _I Ching (Book of Changes)_ and used pennies to get a hexagram for a daily question. My goal was to clarify my relationship goals and my sexuality. The tour guides were a married couple, and the woman had been a lesbian before this marriage. By the end of the trip I accepted my bisexuality and decided my next serious relationship would be with the right person, male or female. In this new space any man I considered getting involved with would have to read Rich's essay and be willing to have an open relationship, the term most often used back then. Now I prefer the term _monogamish_ invented by sex columnist Dan Savage. I liked how relationships in the gay world were negotiated. And I admired and embraced how my gay friends created family networks.

In November 1982 I met my current partner at a dream workshop. We met in a huge loft in an old building on Canal Street. On first sight, he was wearing leather slippers and hugging everyone, I assumed he was gay and was pulled into his energy grabbing one of his hugs. Soon I realized he was hetero and we were talking daily. He read Rich's essay. His best friend during his college years was a lesbian. When I brought up having an open relationship, we agreed to nine-month contracts which would be open or closed. Our first contract was open; I still had dates with women scheduled I did not want to cancel. We agreed we would not break up during the contract period. I don't remember the sequence, but for the first nine years we did open or closed contracts. We made an agreement that when we had sex with others we would use safer sex. Years later, during an open contract, I broke that cardinal rule in an affair I had before leaving New York. I became very ill with two neck vertebras going out. When I got my test result in 1989 I realized that was my initial infection with HIV.

A couple of books helped me understand my hunger for a bonded relationship and many sexual experiences. _Looking for Mr. Goodbar_ , published in 1975, was based on a true story of a woman who was murdered by a man she picked up in a bar. This book was helpful when I was in sexual situations with men. It raised my awareness through its description of how the murderer selected a woman to prey upon. _Women Who Love Too Much_ , published in 1985 by a therapist, resonated with my growing awareness of how severely my father's death affected me; my inability to say no to men for many years; and the constant search and need for love. I was a rebellious young woman who believed a guardian angel, in particular my dead father, protected me.

John and I traveled to the Northwest in 1988 for a month. One goal was to explore Seattle as a possible place to live. While visiting, I heard about a polyamorous conference outside of Eugene, Oregon. We were headed to the Oregon Country Fair, and it fit our schedule, so I suggested we sign-up. Polyamory was a lifestyle that fit my bisexual and dual relationship ideals. I was not ready to close off the possibility of having another intimate relationship with a woman. At this conference we met people living in a variety of configurations and asked many questions. Discussions and workshops focused on the logistics that living with more than one partner necessitated. In our conversations, John said he preferred monogamy. The demands of polyamory with daily discussion and negotiations were not how he wanted to spend time. Even when he had another relationship, his mode was more like having two monogamous relationships simultaneously. I respected his view and thought it was probably better for me to be more focused on future goals. Being with someone so self-aware and grounded in doing good work on this planet is a strong link between us. It makes sense for me as a writer to ask how much time and attention I have to give.

Having sex with men means risking pregnancy, so when I started seeing him I was concerned. Drawn to him, I wanted intimate time without fear of pregnancy, so I decided to have my tubes tied, which I did in 1983.

In January 1988 I had my first affair with a man during an open contract. After our sexual liaison I had an ongoing infection. It took a long time to get the diagnosis, chlamydia. John and I each took two rounds of antibiotics. This affair stirred urges that had been dormant for nearly seven years. That John also had to take an antibiotic disturbed me. Neither of us like having to take Western meds.

Reading books on addiction, I applied for a nine-day Anne Wilson Schaef intensive in Colorado. At this long intensive I went to my first Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) meetings and began to understand I had a sexual addiction, coupled with a marijuana dependency. My addiction worked great for sexual adventures, but it was not good for my bigger goals in life. Addiction means movement toward death. HIV, with its then high death rate, made it easy to call sex an addiction in the late 80s. Resistant to the term "love addiction," which women use more than men, I preferred the hardcore term sex addiction. After all, I had a long history of being highly sexual with men and women. Precocious and adventurous, I had much sex, did a porn modeling job, and modeled nude for artists.

In 1988 I proposed moving from New York and John agreed. After a long process, and the fact a job I had in New York ended, we decided to relocate to Seattle. He was committed to a job in New York for another year so I would move first. Unemployment was helpful for this since I could get my New York issued checks in Seattle.

Despite the experience with chlamydia, I had a brief affair before I left New York. A woman I adored at work brought him into my life. When they broke up he came on to me. Although I knew better, I believed the lie that he tested negative every six months. We did not use a condom the first time we had sex.

With the move John and I agreed to continue our open contract while separated. Although I didn't intend to have an affair, moving to a new city was lonely. Settling into Seattle I went to many workshops and met a man at a Tibetan Healing by Humming workshop. He was a Rajneesh follower. We became sexually intimate, and he started asking questions about AIDS on a regular basis. Osho (the name this Rajneesh adopted) called for his followers to get tested. Two followers on their land in Oregon tested positive. Since I had tested negative when trying to diagnose chlamydia, I knew I was negative so suggested we get tested.

The test came back positive. He tested negative, numerous times, even despite a condom breakage. Research shows the type of HIV in the United States has a low risk of a woman passing HIV to a man. It is not impossible, but from my direct experience I realized my risk of infecting a man was extremely low. My risk as a woman was much higher to contract the virus from a man than any man contracting it from me.

Getting my HIV diagnosis was a reality slap.

Things changed again on learning my status. I was thirty-seven, it was time to make the changes I had promised myself and get serious about the time I had left. Learning about HIV/AIDS and how people died became a priority. Going back to school was in process. So when I got a job at the biggest Northwest AIDS service organization, the Northwest AIDS Foundation, it was hard to believe my luck. For eighteen years I worked there, much of that time as an HIV/AIDS case manager after achieving my counseling Master degree.

Doing this work, many men told me they'd given up sex. An HIV positive test incites an initial reaction to recoil. It is a typical response in our stigmatizing society, which I also felt initially. Sex is such an important part of life; I didn't want to permanently lose sexual desire even if it waned after the initial shock.

Over time my sex life has changed radically. John forgave me, for the second time after the second disease. And despite it he decided to stay. For this I am grateful. We made a commitment to be monogamous.

Masturbation is now my most frequent form of sex, my body has changed, I've aged and went through menopause. I'm not sure when I realized that HIV accelerates the aging process, but it was long before it was a common theme in the AIDS literature. When going through menopause sex became painful. The last time John and I pushed past the pain to full penetration was long ago. After that my vagina clamped up and the pain became too intense for insertive sex. At gynecological appointments I asked for a child-sized speculum. My vagina has signs of drying due to estrogen reduction. I asked several gynecologists over the years what would help, what they suggested did not work. And yes, we use lube.

Did AIDS ruin my sex life? It has not destroyed my ability to have orgasms with my electric Wahl vibrator. It's an important part of my health regimen to have regular orgasms. Now, sexual satisfaction is from my vibrator. This reminds me of the first lesbian I seduced; she relied on her vibrator for orgasms. She told me her body didn't respond to normal stimulation. It's been years since I've had an orgasm without a vibrator.

Did AIDS, combined with aging and menopause, ruin my sex life? I'm told menopause does not alter sexual desire, but my desire to make love with a partner has declined to near zero—but not my desire to use a vibrator. Not enough is studied about women living with AIDS. And certainly not nearly enough about how menopause affects us.

Maybe the combination of AIDS, getting older, menopause, and settling down with one partner caused this alteration of my sex life. Has the lack of and open relationship, and the capacity for sexual novelty, which my body and mind remember, diminished my desire for sex? If I were to have an affair, would the natural excitement of being with a new person re-spark my sexual energy? It's an unknown because the open clause has closed in our now monogamous relationship. HIV complicates things.

And then there is the secret, something so taboo I don't talk about it. John stayed with me after my diagnosis, but stopped deep kissing—French kissing—long slow savory kisses. He didn't talk about it. He just stopped. When I realized he refused to kiss back my gut collapsed inward and tears came from deep. He explained why, and it makes sense; he has a history of frequent sores in his mouth, so deep kissing became the line he would no longer cross. Grateful he stayed, but this no deep kissing rule feels like punishment; and it is a consequence I live with. And I wonder, is this what has changed my sex life with him?

The fact is, no matter the cause, my sex life and sexual desire have decreased. We still have sex, but without intercourse. And after he climaxes, he holds me while I masturbate. We cuddle, which is wonderful, but I miss the intimacy of long deep kisses. So I have to ask, do I harbor hurt and anger at so much loss? And I wonder if my vagina, tightened and painful when we attempt intercourse, is enacting an emotional response to the loss of a lingering kiss. The mouth and its many nerve cells commune with the vagina. His withholding kisses in the age of Undetectable=Untransmittable (U=U) feels hurtful. It is my sacrifice this lifetime. My retribution.

He is the man who fills many empty places inside me. When I learned I was infected I told him he could leave. He didn't enter a relationship with me having a deadly disease, so he could exit. But we had a plan, and he kept to the plan. He is steady. He keeps promises. He shows up on time. A few of the many things I love about him. He moved west, then took time to decide. We took a "Breaking Up" workshop with a therapist. Sometime after this he decided to stay. I felt lucky. The man I loved stayed. He was not afraid of what HIV/AIDS might mean for our future. Back then I believed I would die first and he would go on to meet someone new and have another long relationship. We're going on thirty-nine years, and over thirty of them I've been infected. I've survived. Now there is no guarantee I will die first.

Our sex life is something that is not easy to talk about, so mostly I don't. After all, I got what I wanted, a partner who I love and who loves me enough to commit despite my HIV status. He's a partner who supports my writing. We have multiple cross interests, we're a match and he makes me happy. This is a relationship many women do not have, HIV positive or not. Also, I don't have to go through the experience of telling new potential partners my status. I have no idea what would have happened if he had left, if I'd be alone, in a relationship or two, or none.

Menopause changes people, and many women leave relationships during the change. Our bodies transform. We undergo a metamorphosis. So what is normal for women during menopause? When I ask women friends I get a variety of opinions. But there are no set answers. Sex changes for men as they age too. In fact, many gay men with HIV take testosterone. I had mine tested and it is low, but for a woman not unusually low. I didn't start taking testosterone.

For years I kept my HIV status secret. Even in 2020, stigma is alive and well. Nearly thirty years was a long time to keep a secret, but I had allies, mostly gay men. Eventually, I published a book of poems that included my personal poems about living with AIDS. This means I came out publicly in 2016. It was scary but much easier than my fear had imagined.

Now sex with John is rare. Cuddles are warm and necessary, nightly skin-to-skin contact is intimate and important, but the loss of intercourse is challenging for the relationship. He would still be fucking me if it wasn't painful, but without deep kissing it's not the same. And there are now no other relationship options for me while committed to him.

To many I appear heterosexual. John is often referred to as my husband because we have been together so long. But I correct people because it is a matter of principle. I've engaged with the gay community through my work in HIV/AIDS for twenty-one years, and that work continues. The causes I fight for are for my friends and from my heart—it is political. My heart is with the gay community. I identify as bi and queer because I can never go back to the heterosexual I never felt I truly was, but it is like holding a cracked eggshell. I'm the one who has fractured my shell. Sex is much more delicate than when I indulged freely, a child of the sexual revolution. I've pushed past edges to feel the rough boundaries of my sexuality and found myself infected through my addiction. Likely lost forever is my chance to have another intimate and sexual bond with a woman. Intense lovemaking has ceased. Thinned like my vaginal walls.

An early partner's aunt, on her eighty-fifth birthday, when asked what she really wanted for her birthday said, "To be forty years younger and have a good fuck." In many ways I wish I could go back to such a time. Moments of intense sexual gratification loom big in my mind.

So back to what is wrong: pain on attempted intercourse; pain on putting a speculum into my vagina; pain on putting in the E-String ring, a prescribed time release form of estrogen which should help to lubricate my estrogen-missing vaginal tissues and walls. What causes this physical pain? Is it emotional? Is it not having the novelty of the occasional affair? Is it getting older? Or something else? Or has HIV changed me? Tests show nothing. What has been suggested or prescribed has not helped. I have tried an assortment of creams and recommended lubes. I went to a pelvic floor class at a local hospital and learned about rings, OhNut, that a man puts on to have a shorter penetration. There are a variety of dildo-like objects to insert and stretch the vagina. Perhaps these might help. The gynecologists did not talk about these options. My exploration continues.

There are no answers in the medical world for women with HIV/AIDS who go through menopause. The old days of getting high and fucking are gone forever, even with U=U. I've aged and am not on anyone's radar. There is much love with my partner, and we live in supportive parallel worlds, with long periods without an erotic connection. But we curl up together at night and our skin-to-skin connection is my favorite time. A lack of touch can lead to irritation. I love him, we have much in common. We finish each other's sentences as long-term couples tend to do. I wish U=U made sense to him. I wish he would kiss me. I've given up on a cure, given up on dying first. Neither of us easily do Western medicine, so I wouldn't ask him to take PrEP. It's not something we've talked about. It's bad enough I have to be on antiretrovirals. So apparently there will be no more deep kisses, possibly no intercourse. Part of me does not want this to be forever, another part doesn't miss intercourse, only the kisses. It's not a problem as long as I can masturbate and have skin-to-skin intimacy. But will it become a problem for him, and for our relationship?

For years I had an opulence of sex and I'm glad I had the experiences I had. Now I feel like the nun who gets orgasmic energy from the movement of sap while leaning against a tree. Sex with a tree. It feels female, feminist, intimate, some of the aspects of sex I miss. It is a quieting down to the sweetness my otherwise strong desire to push boundaries missed. I hold this new celibacy as my new sexual edge, to experience power in subtle energies. We can't go backward in time, so perhaps change can be a positive tuning to myself and my inner flow of energy like this nun. And to gratification in nature, feeling the tree's sap, a gentle consistent love that slows in winter's cold and softens in summer heat.

***
STUART BARNES

MOBY DICK; OR, THE WHITE WHALE: a pentina

I

regard

this

as

queer.

Queer

eye,

ass,

regard

this...

this

queer

regard.

Eye

ass,

ass—

this.

I

queer

regard,

regard

as

queer

this

eye.

I regard his

ass, queer.

Note: "I regard this as queer" is a phrase from Herman Melville's _Moby Dick; or, the White Whale_.

***
LUNA'S RONDEAU

Another moon poem, but the moon's

the stole of a woman hiding spoons

from her dishy flame; garnet glister

and husky chuckle while her sister

dreams of rocking, rolling afternoons.

"Chariot awaits." Saffron festoons

the skyline. Sol tosses gold balloons,

"You, you, you, ignite the transistor—

another moon poem!"

In Luna's daydream cows vault tycoons,

Russian Blues violin, she harpoons

Nero, screws the windscreen demister

dial, floors it. Sol can't resist her

swing and, bearding Aurora's wings, croons

another moon poem.

***
THEODORE CORNWELL

HERRING COVE

The seal is the thing wherein I'll catch

the conscience of a fool. The fool

of course, being touristy me. I swam

out naked from the pebbled shore

and felt the freedom of a mammal

in a weightless space, the ocean warm

and welcoming. I fluttered, close to land,

clinging to the safety of Cape Cod's chaste

and gentle shore (preserved for birds,

most no larger than a plover).

in the shallows I wallowed on my back

and watched the clouds enact a play.

Up high, Judy morphed into Judas

and opened ferocious jaws that seemed

ready to devour as I watched indifferently.

And then this gorgon reappeared right next

to me, transformed into a seal whose head

breached the water to my left—the dewy

eyes as cute as those of any carnivore

enslaved in zoo or carnival. But those

fangs so close, unsheathed—shot a panic

needle into me. I thrashed and bellowed

and clamored back to safety on the beach.

The seal, at ease, unperturbed, regarded

me, I think, rather quizzically. Had it been

tamed and trained in zoo or circus, it might

have reared itself up and clapped its flippers

in amused delight. Being wild and alien,

it watched in quiet reverie, wondering, perhaps,

the way nonverbal mammals must wonder,

what it had done to provoke such a show

of fear and flight from a mighty humanoid.

Seal must think I come from an odd species.

You have no idea, seal. You have no idea.

***
FIREWORKS!

For the unintended

and the unwarned.

(like the tee-shirt says,

tacky yet unrefined).

Poof in the distance,

a dirty cherry shower.

Poof again,

silver and blue gardenias

It's as if

June 9th usurped

the 4th of July.

It's as if June 9th

absconded with the crown.

Left behind: a dependent clause.

(when thunder isn't thunder)

Long live June the 9th!

In the distance there is

no cause for cheer.

But cheer I do.

Perhaps the mirthless earth

cheers too.

A show

in the wrong month

for all the wrong reasons.

I wasn't even thinking of

the Fourth of July.

Then, June the 9th peaked out

from beneath the sheets and said:

"Whenever you're ready."

***
M.J. ARCANGELINI

HAND ON THE BUTTON

The cut of the suit, fitted or structured,

and the choice of fabric can accentuate

or hide the body it embraces. This hand

emerging from a sleeve fingers a button,

considering his next step. Underneath the

dark cloth, white boxers hold the decision.

Desire resides not in the cut or fabric of a suit,

but in the way the man chooses to remove it;

teasing, seductively folding each element, or

hastily, possessed with passionate urgency.

***
ON THE SHORELINE

A firm breeze catches the white shirt

held tight in his right hand, sets it

billowing, in sympathy with sails.

Taking his suit off leaves nothing

between skin and caressing sunlight.

The man opens his naked body to the

elements. Sand collects, grinding

into creases and crevices. Wind carries

drops of salt water to rinse suit sweat

from the images inked across his skin.

***
WALTER HOLLAND

HALSTON

What becomes a legend most?

The old cry for Blackglama furs on seventies TV?

Isn't it always a faggot, a faggot who's diseased?

Who makes it his habit of kneeling down to please?

A pity, gays were played at the mercy of straights—

Dress me! Dress me! Up in glamor!

Glitz, hype, socially-crazed clamor. Deify my hair, my face,

Give me thrills—shock, taste.

Pervs serve the preferred. Warhol, Truman, Calvin

Klein—the ladies had a "gay old time," "54'?" "Studio?"

"Skip the line." And at Le Cirque they dined and dined,

looking smart by some fag's fabulous designs,

while "the queers" were in the Pines dying with their kind—

but still they paid to hear: "You look divine!"

For who knows best how to dress a fake? Pittsburgh poof,

Naw'lins fairy, Bronx Nelly? Halston

letting out a seam, as they talked marriages gone bad;

'lots of "Blow" kept the gowns flowing; 'lots of "Snow"

kept his hands sewing—bathhouse escorts—gorgeous

studs. He clad the pretty, hung out with the stars—Bianca, Andy, Liza—

Oh Halston! Oh Halston! Why were they all so mean!

Get up. Get up old cashmere queen.

Fucking magic-maker,

rip off the never real, the thing that never fit, the undesired, the un-dreamed.

***

EGYPTIAN

For Clyde "Skip" Wachsberger (1945-2011),

after Iris Love (1933-2020) and Liz Smith (1923-2017)

You said that when you were 12,

Iris and Liz took you on a trip to Egypt,

a young gay boy with horn-rimmed glasses

and somewhat cross-eyed, though with

a mane of bright red hair and an angelic face

like some portrait by da Vinci, you seemed

so innocent and sweet. They were your fairy

godmothers, each eccentric as the other,

handing you any number of grown-up books.

You read Graves's _I, Claudius_ and Gibbon's

histories of Rome, close to all six volumes,

delirious with wonder, and whiled away your

afternoons. As Iris went on digs, and Liz took siestas

you watched young boys with fezzes serve iced

tea or lemonade to tired tourists lounging

in the shade. At your age, those were amazing times,

talk of mummies, hidden vaults filled with jewels,

tooled parchment books; a world of sitting quietly

as Iris downed her gin and Liz gossiped

about her friends with all their tawdry sins.

You became a scene painter for the Met, adept

in _trompe l'oeile_ , transforming opera sets into

the tombs of Cairo or the palace of Versailles.

And when the two "aunties" dined on New York's

haute cuisine, they hid their Boston Marriage

from the evil press as Liz had kept her enemies

in check by copious notes with quotes from them

as they confessed to naughtiness, which any second

Liz could pull from out of her desk or conveniently forget.

A charmed life, you had said, dinner parties at your smart

apartment, painted as a facsimile of ancient Pompeii,

mosaic floors with goldfish pond, and walls depicting

deities, mythic beasts, and male youths doing the unthinkable

as they were prone to do. Iris liked to speak of gays euphemistically;

she called them "Egyptian," code word for queer, and in polite

gatherings of close friends, she always would pronounce it delectably

on her tongue, a tongue and cheek admission to her many savvy fans

(all men). And you who finally moved away and bought a house

in Orient, dating back to the dawn of the nation, (a fix-me-upper,

damaged, wooden, and old), tended to your wild British garden.

Dead from prostate cancer, you lived to sixty-six, and wrote

a journal of your final days, about your simple village, Charles,

and your fig tree, the cultivation of roses, and stories excavated from

an "Egypt" long-ago—decorative and dirty, brought into the sunlight

from far, far below, the mysteries of a kitsch kingdom, where mum

was the word, painted, the fakery, and resplendent the codes.

***
PHILIP DEAN WALKER

PRINCESS

I was already drunk when I got there. I mean, obvi. Tracy drove so why the fuck not start pre-gaming? La Viola is BYOB so I'm gonna Bring My Own Blackout. Baller! Kevin, Peter, and I did Fireball whiskey shots in the backseat while Tracy drove us to City Center. Fuck yeah! I usually just bring a flask (it's the one Kevin gave me for my birthday last year—I bejeweled it and then he started calling me "Princess." Hey, I don't mind. I mean, I am a fucking princess). But this time, Kevin brought a whole handle for us to take swigs from. Kevin's so sweet. We only hooked up those two times when we were both wasted, but I know he likes me. I'm blonde and I've got a killer body. He'd have to be blind or a total fag not to wanna fuck me. I've been into him since Archbishop Wood. He's, like, _always_ with Peter though who isn't my biggest fan. Whatever. I'll win him over. Fuck it, I'll win them both over. #winning #laviola #shots #hotbitch #hotbucks

We took a group pic at La Viola after dinner. Tag me! Neil wore that stupid pinkish-peach shirt again. He always looks like a total fucking flamer, right? Andrea said that a friend of hers was working the door at Playa and could get us in later. OMG. Wait, I totally forgot to tell you this last night when I got home. On our way there, we passed these two fags who were carrying slices with them. One of them was totally walking in our path and Peter was like, "Watch it, dude" and shoved him to the ground. Then his queeny little boyfriend got all up in our faces so Kevin threw him down with one hard slug. I love him! So manly. The second one was crying or something and there was blood pouring out of his mouth. "Shut the fuck up, you faggot!" I screamed. I kicked him in the head a couple of times. I honestly just remembered doing that. You know how foggy I get after doing Fireball all night. Whatever. He was already bleeding. I remember his pizza on the ground had drops of blood on it. Made me think of "Drops of Jupiter." Ugh, I love that song. The whole group of us was, like, surrounding them. There was blood everywhere. They tried to get up to defend themselves but I kicked one of them again with the point of my Tory Burch. Honestly, when did this neighborhood get so faggy?

So when we finally got to Playa, there was a line down the block but Andrea pulled us all to the front and whispered something to the fat guy who was watching the door. I saw Kevin taking off his shirt because there was some blood smeared on the collar. It's cool though, he had on one of those tight white undershirts underneath. So hot. He looks like a _CW_ actor. We are definitely going to fuck soon, I know it. The whole swarm of us invaded the club and Peter bought us all shots. I think he was, like, kind of impressed at how fucking Katniss Everdeen I got back there with that gay couple. Now he'll probably get out of my way with the whole Kevin sitch.

I'm working all day today at the hospital, but I'm so fucking hungover. Like, I need an IV of red Gatorade STAT. Doesn't Julie-Ann take some kind of herbal pill or something so she doesn't wake up feeling like hot-fried death in the morning? I need one of those the next time we go out. Oh, and the fucking tip of my Tory Burch is kind of busted. Whatever, my dad will just get me new ones.

So, what are we doing tonight?

***
ARTHUR DURKEE

FOSSILS

When I was young,

hiking up my first mountains,

the Earth-knowing woke

strong in me. I felt

the layers underfoot like strata of fog,

alternately tough or thinning,

I pushed through in my mind,

strode millions of suns per step,

leaping discontinuities as on the trail

I waded freshets that promised

to wear heights, given time,

down to beach sand.

At the teen barn dance,

for a moment back to back

our shoulder blades in flight

clacked and sponged against each other,

spines sweaty in the hot summer dusk,

buttocks brushing as hips swayed.

Sublime illicit sweat-smear

of shirtless near-men, any touch

ignites no matter who, as we appeared

to dance with our pretend girlfriends,

flowed into formation between

the beat's quick turns, red party light

stabbing the air where it gapped

between furtive gropes.

Coiled ropes of my fingerprint

against crinoid whorls and loops,

breathless whirl of ancient lime-embedded

flower-worm, spiral together cyclic

in deep time, my hiking hand brushes

an outcropped cliff overlooking farms,

cousin to the spiral life-trace bound

in stone on the planet's tallest mountain.

***
DAYS OF 2004

half-naked in humid mid-morning

sipping tea and drawing the line

of my arm on paper in repose

I remember your shoulder that I kissed

taste, tongue, lascivious grace

smooth fine hairs erect

in feather touch

geometry of desire

angle of repose

in geologic time seemed just a day

I still taste the salt on you

sweat and ancient sea, dry desert pan

still see the shaded gradient of color bands

your body in light and shadow

how can I remember so clearly your flesh

when so much else is gone

***
GREGG SHAPIRO

PAN(DEM)IC ATTACK

Every scratchy throat. Every night

sweat. Every single restless night.

Every sniffle and sneeze and

pre-sneeze tickle. Every cleared

throat. Every cough or suggestion

of a cough. Every feverish flash or

threat of body temperature adjustment.

Every isolation violation. Every news

story or interpretation, expression

of news, relating of news, distortion

of facts by perceived trusted sources

and those perpetuating and promoting

lies coming from the decaying mouths

of leaders and the powerful. Every mask

worn at the wrong angle or degree. Every

exposed nose or nostril, lower lip or row

of teeth. Every vibrant bandana flapping

more than is permissible or recommended.

Every murky secret revealed and every

head shaken in disgust by such disclosure

or leak. Every shirtless (and fucking hot)

runner or bicyclist or rollerblading or fast

walking man with or without the proper

protective gear. Every suddenly friendly

law enforcement officer on a motorcycle

or on foot or behind the wheel of a cruiser

just serving and protecting. Every mammal

or fowl, every country or city scapegoated

and shamed without verification. Everyone

thinking of pouring themselves a glass

of bleach, neat or on the rocks. Every last

scientist, every laboratory vibrating with

hope and despair, promise and disappointment.

Every watchful eye of every first responder

on the verge of tears, edging ever closer

to total exhaustion, to complete depletion,

to crumpling under the weight of a war

with no end in sight. Every panic inducing,

sleep-depriving thought of hospitalization,

of sedation and ventilation, of never getting

out or getting out alive, unscarred.

***
CHICAGO, FIRE

What does fire want? A copper kettle sitting on its blue

face? Skin food and blood satisfaction. Paper airplanes,

the instructions for how to make paper airplanes printed

on brown paper bags. A vintage plastic toy in its original

paper wrapper. Cardboard that tastes good on fire's

gourmet tongue. Calendars, greeting cards, checkbook

registers, legal pads, rolls of paper towels, receipts, credit

reports, recipes, doors, floors, dining room tables, cloth

napkins and bamboo placemats. Sometimes fire wants

to perform tricks that earn your respect and disapproval

equally. Watch out when fire gets angry or thinks you aren't

paying close enough attention. Fire wants to impress you

by going where you'd never expect. Expanding its diet to

include an ocean teaming with venomous snakes, a leafy

sea dragon, creatures practiced in the art of camouflage.

Fire wants uniforms in natural and man-made fibers, and

anyone foolish enough to wear one. Fire wishes to drink

from hydrants and long, thick hoses suggesting something

erotic, orgasmic, fantastic. There's enough air in the flames

for a belching sound so loud your ears ring for days. You'll

never get the smell of burning hair out of your nose.

***
DENISE DUHAMEL

BARN BABIES

In trying to keep its residents safe, the nursing home

suspends all activities. No Sunday mass, no Lifetime

movies with popcorn and juice. No physical therapy

for my mother. No strolls down the hall where she'd

keep a book on the seat of her walker in case she needed

a rest. No rolling into the family room with the curio cabinet

full of teacups, with the window overlooking the geese.

No bingo, no trivia night, no piano bar. And no Barn Babies,

my mother's favorite pastime. She and the other residents

were wheeled into the elevator, then down to the basement

where they could hold bunnies, kittens, and puppies,

where they could pet a diapered goat or lamb, a potbellied pig,

where they could watch the chicks and ducklings peck at food

pellets on the cement floor.

In trying to keep the world safe,

the rest of us shelter-in-place. In our absence, animals

take to the streets. As I walk nearly empty Florida paths

the chameleons and lizards are out in full force.

In Dania Beach, the next town north, Brian Wood

is making masks from the skins of Burmese pythons,

an invasive species taking over the Everglades.

Mountain goats

roam a seaside town in Wales. Wild deer look into an empty

Samsung store in Sri Lanka. Cows sunbathe on a Corsica beach.

Hundreds of monkeys surround the presidential palace

in New Delhi. A herd of goats runs through San Jose

stopping to eat plants from suburban lawns. Wild boar

and red foxes saunter through Israel, while fox cubs

frolic in a Toronto parking lot. Pumas glide through Chili.

Thai beaches are home to more sea turtles nests this spring

than any time in the last two decades. Penguins waddle

through Cape Town. In Bolivia, horses and llamas

trek a deserted highway.

And speaking of llamas,

their nanobodies could potentially be used as a treatment

for people infected with COVID-19. When I phone my mother,

a retired nurse, I tell her of this development.

_Llamas!_ she says. _Let me tell the CNA. If llamas are that good_

_for us, maybe we can get Barn Babies back_.

***
FORTY-FIVE |fôrd??f?v| noun

Im-POTUS, Total Bleach Bum, Let Them Eat Clorox, The Accidental President, President Velveeta. Douche L'Orange, Orange Julius. Con Don, Donnie Bratso, The Combover Con Artist. Bratman, Darth Hater, The Infuriator, Dumbelldore. Fuckface Von Clownstick. Clown-in-Chief, Rapist-in-Chief, Racist-in-Chief. Cheeto-in-Chief, Comrade Cheetolino, Cheeto Benito. Mango Mussolini. Putin's Puppet, Putin's Papaya-Flavored Pawn. Adolf Twitler, Hair Furher. The Fanta Fascist, Benedict Donald, Genghis Can't. Angry Creamsicle, The Fraud of Fifth Avenue. President Gold Man Sucks. The White Pride Piper. Cadet Bone Spurs, Draft Dodger Don. Donnie TicTac, Barbecued Brutus, Carrot Demon, The Talking Yam. The World's Greatest Troll (Doll), Little Lady Fingers, Prima Donald, Sir Sissypants. The Great White Dope. Tangerine Tornado, The Golden Wrecking Ball. Agent Orange. Creep Throat. The Last of the Mango Mohawkans, King Leer. The Lone Deranger, The Lyin' King. The Human Tanning Bed Warning Label. Boss Tweet, Captain Chaos, Crown Prince of of Politwits. Halfwit Tweet Twit. Pudgy McTrumpcake. Trumplethinskin. Trumpty Dumpty. Donald Chump.

See also Trump, codename for Meth.

***
EDEN

I once was Eve, killing weeds with Roundup in Eden.

An apple a day will lead to a hospital stay, each

Pink Lady tasting like pesticides, smelling like

a Bath and Body candle. I touch an authentic

bruised place with my thumb, a small

plunging plop. I taste red, then brown.

My friend is dying in Colorado. My friend is living

in Colorado. An apple can't really hurt you,

can it? Okey dokey, smokie, Australia's on fire.

Trump gives the thumbs up. Adam Sandler

plays Adam Schiff in the miniseries _OK Boomer!_

The roads under the beige RV of retirement

are full of potholes. Tom Hanks's soccer ball

introduces itself to Tom Hanks's Mr. Rogers.

Now I am Eve, organic and earnest, trying to save

all things red and white, blue and orange,

rising up from the ground choking.

***
JOSEPH L. CUMER

THESE THINGS HAPPEN

"Thank you for calling Sink Or Swim. Try our fish once and you'll be hooked! Store manager Chip speaking. How may I help you today?"

"I need to speak to one of your employees—Zack Stefano—right away, please."

"I'm sorry, but Zack is unavailable right now. We're in the middle of our lunch rush."

_"Please_. It's an emergency."

"What kind of emergency?"

"His husband just got hit by a car and is seriously injured. That kind of emergency!"

"... His _husband_?"

"Yes! Now may I _please_ speak to him?"

"Well... all right. May I ask who's calling?"

"Christina Abernathy. _Please_ hurry!"

Chip put the phone down on his desk, left his office, and entered the restaurant's kitchen. As always, he recoiled at the sharp odor of fish. Chip detested fish.

He spotted Zack at a prep table, busily engaged in making salads. He went up to Zack and tapped him on the shoulder. Zack turned and looked at him quizzically.

"What is it, Chip?" he asked as he continued his work on the salads.

"You have a phone call. From somebody named Christina something. She says it's an emergency."

"An _emergency_?"

"That's what she said. And it's about your _husband_." Chip smirked at Zack and pursed his lips.

"Oh god! What's _happened_?"

"You'd better talk to her yourself. Come on, you can take it in my office. Just try to keep it short, okay?"

Zack sprinted to Chip's office and picked up the phone. Chip entered a few moments later and closed the door. He stood behind Zack, openly listening.

"Christina? Are you there?"

"Yes, Zack. I'm here."

"What _is_ it? What's wrong?"

"It's Robert—he was hit by a car ten minutes ago while he was crossing the street. The ambulance just took him to the hospital."

"Oh Jesus! How bad is it?"

"Pretty bad, Zack. The car knocked him out and ran over his legs. I saw the whole thing."

Zack began to tremble. "Tell me the truth, Christina! Is he _dead_?"

_"No_! I swear to god he isn't dead, Zack! But it's _bad_. No doubt of _that_."

"Oh my god... I'll leave right _now_. Where are they taking him?"

"Muskegon Catholic. He ought to be there any minute."

"You know I'm stuck all the way up here in fucking Whitehall. It's gonna take me awhile to get there. Can you go to the hospital and wait for me?"

"Of course I can! I'm sitting in my car now and I'm going to the hospital the second I'm off the phone."

"Okay, thanks. I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Good. And Zack, please drive _safely_. For everybody's sake!"

"I will. Bye."

Zack put the phone down and turned to Chip. "I'm leaving. Bye."

"Wait a minute! We're in the _middle_ of lunch."

"So what? I don't give a shit."

"Well, your _husband_ ," Chip paused to smirk again, "will just have to wait."

"No he won't."

"Zack, you _cannot_ leave now! We're already shorthanded today."

Zack looked Chip squarely in the eye. "Go fuck yourself."

Chip's mouth dropped open. A look of fury sprang to his face. "You're fired!"

"Good! Like that old song says, you can take this job and shove it! And to motherfucking _hell_ with you, Chip."

"Get out! Right _now_."

"I'm _going_!" Zack ripped the nets off his hair and beard and lobbed them at Chip. "Thanks for your fucking _permission_. I'll be back for my check. And _you_ can go rot in hell."

"I think it's a _lot_ likelier that you and your _husband_ will. My god, just wait'll everybody hears _this_ one!"

"Fuck 'em. I'm just wasting time, talking to _you_."

Zack dashed out of Chip's office and went running toward the nearby fire exit, triggering its alarm as he pushed his way through it.

*

Christina was perched on a small green chair at the back of an emergency exam room. She twisted uncomfortably on the hard plastic, sick with worry.

On the bed that filled the room's center lay Robert Pehacek, her best friend. He was unconscious.

Christina stared at the bed. All she could see of Robert was his curly blonde beard and his shoulder-length dark blonde hair, usually a mirror image of her own but now half shaved away. The shaved part was covered by a large square bandage. And she could see his face. It was a face she'd known for thirty years, ever since she'd met Robert on their first day of kindergarten, a time when she'd been scared shitless and he had sensed that she needed a friend. The rest of Robert was covered by a bright white starchy-looking sheet.

Christina silently began to cry. She realized with surprise that she felt like praying. But being a confirmed atheist, she hadn't prayed since she was a child. So instead she firmly sent a thought message to Robert: _Don't die. Don't die. You can't die. Zack and I_ need _you_.

She repeated this message over and over.

Suddenly Robert's body twitched under the sheet. Christina jumped up for a closer look, scarcely daring to hope.

As she watched, Robert twitched again. And then once again, more markedly. And his eyes slowly opened.

Christina rushed to the curtain shutting off the exam room and yanked it open.

"Nurse! Nurse! Come quick! He's _conscious_."

Soon a nurse looked in, confirmed this, and nodded. "I'll send the doctor in, just as soon as I can find him," she said.

Christina turned back to the bed. "Robert, can you hear me?"

Robert looked at her. "Christina... Yes... I can hear you... Why am I here? What happened to me?"

"Don't you remember? _Try_ to remember."

Robert looked puzzled for a few moments. Then he said, "We were at the Goodwill store."

"Right... Then what?"

"We... we left... And we were on the sidewalk... out front."

"Yeah, that's right. And then?"

"Uh, let's see... You started walking... down the street. To your car."

"Right. What'd _you_ do?"

"... I was standing on the corner. And... uh... I was waiting for the light to change."

"Yes! And then what?"

"I... I started to cross the street."

"And..."

Robert looked puzzled again. "I think that's all I remember... except for some really loud noise... Why can't I remember anything after that?"

"Because you got hit by a speeding car that ran the light. You were knocked unconscious. And the car ran over you."

"Oh... It did?"

"Yes."

"... That must be why everything hurts."

"You got it."

Robert looked around the room as he winced in pain. "Where's Zack?"

"He's on his way. He was at work up in Whitehall. He'll be here real soon."

"Oh." Tears began to flow from Robert's eyes. "I need Zack."

"He's coming. He—"

The doctor entered the exam room then, looking very harried.

"So. He's conscious?" he said to Christina.

"Yes. I'm conscious," said Robert. "You can talk to _me_."

The doctor laughed. "Feisty! Always a good sign."

The doctor was an attractive, brown-bearded and medium-sized man in his late twenties, whose hospital ID tag identified as Brian Hvalko. He glanced at the myriad of monitors that were connected to Robert.

"Vital signs look good, all things considered," he said. "You got pretty banged up, you know."

"Yeah... Christina just told me about it."

Dr. Hvalko looked closely at Robert. "Remember any of what happened?"

"Sort of."

"He remembers everything right up to the accident, Doctor," said Christina. "I've been quizzing him about it."

The doctor nodded approvingly. "Very good. Apparently no brain damage then."

"Thank god," breathed Christina.

"The x-ray shows a concussion," said the doctor to Robert. "Not _too_ bad a one though."

"Did the car hit my head?"

"No. It knocked you on your ass, and your head hit the street. Pretty hard too, from the look of things. But you'll be all right, barring any complications. It'll take some time though. Quite a bit of time."

Robert nodded. "I see." He winced again.

"It might not seem like it now—I know you must be in an enormous amount of pain—but you're really a very lucky man."

"What about the rest of him, Doctor?" asked Christina.

"We'll discuss that later. Are you his wife?"

"No. His best friend."

"Isn't he married?

"Yes. To a man."

"Oh, okay. Isn't he coming?

"He's on his way."

"Good. We'll talk later."

Christina turned to Robert. He had already fallen asleep.

*

Later, Dr. Hvalko met with Zack and Christina.

He explained the situation about Robert's legs. One of the legs had a simple fracture ("no problem," as Dr. Hvalko called it). But the other leg was so badly damaged ("pulverized," said the doctor) that it probably required amputation.

"It's _possible_ it could be saved," said Dr. Hvalko. "This isn't my area of expertise. But in my opinion, no. It would require several reconstructive surgeries that probably wouldn't be fully successful anyway, and it would greatly prolong the period of his recovery. It could be a _very_ long time—maybe years—before he could resume his normal life. And even then the leg would continue to plague him forever. In my opinion, the amputation would be a far better choice—less suffering for everyone, especially him. We simply get rid of that entire mess and fit him with a prosthesis after what's left heals. If this had happened to me or to someone I loved, that's what I'd opt for. No doubt about it."

Zack and Christina looked at each other for a long time without speaking.

"Of course, some people would _hate_ the idea of a prosthesis. They'd want to fight to save the leg if there was any chance at all of it being successful. Now I'm very aware that I don't know this man. I have no idea what his take on it would be. That's where you two come in. What do you think?"

Zack and Christina looked at each other again.

"Tell me what you think first, Christina. You've known him a lot longer than I have."

"You already know what I think, Zack. I know what you think too. He'd go for the prosthesis."

Zack nodded. "It's a no-brainer."

"Very good," said Dr. Hvalko. "By far the wiser choice. Of course, both the options suck—there's no escaping _that_. But these things happen. And he'll be needing a lot of physical and emotional support. Will you two be able to provide it?"

"Yes," said Zack and Christina together.

Dr. Hvalko smiled. "Like I told him, he's a very lucky man."

*

"Hi," said the night nurse as she entered the room pushing a finger-clip blood pressure testing device ahead of her and rolling it up to the side of Robert's bed. It looked like a parking meter on wheels.

Zack looked up from the newspaper he was reading; he'd been having a hard time trying to focus on the words in front of him. He was sitting in a chair he'd pulled up to the other side of Robert's bed. Christina had left about an hour earlier.

"Hi."

"It's after visiting hours, you know. They ended a long time ago."

"I know. But Dr. Hvalko said it would be okay for me to stay longer. Even all night if I wanted to. Which I do."

"He said that?"

"Yeah. He said he'd make a note of it on Robert's chart."

Zack turned his attention back to the _Muskegon Chronicle_ while the nurse went over to the computer screen that hung from a corner of the ceiling.

"Okay," she eventually said. "I see you're right. Here's the note—'overnight visitors permitted.'"

"Good."

The nurse was a tall fortyish redhead wearing a blue pantsuit uniform. From her neck dangled a hospital identification tag and an ornate silver cross on a heavy chain.

"I'm Jenni. I'll be on duty here until seven in the morning. What's your name?"

"Zack."

"Zack. Is that short for Zachariah? Or is it Zachary?"

"Zachariah."

"That's a _beautiful_ name. You should use the whole thing."

"I don't like it. It's too biblical."

"Oh." Jenni looked crestfallen. But judging from how eagerly she was eying Zack, it was easy to see that she regarded him as being hot stuff. She took in his bushy black hair and beard, and his beautiful big green eyes, and decided to ignore his heresy.

"I really like your hair," she said. "Is that a perm?"

Zack looked up from the newspaper for a moment. "No."

"It's _natural_? Wow."

Zack shrugged and resumed reading.

There was a pause as Jenni continued her assessment of Zack.

"I'd trim the beard though," she said, consideringly. "Too long."

"I like it the way it is," said Zack, not looking up.

"Well, whatever."

Jenni glanced at Robert in the bed, and back at Zack. Then she repeated this action more slowly.

"You kinda look like him," she said, gesturing at Robert. "Are you his brother?"

Zack looked up again. "No. I'm his husband."

"His... _husband_?"

Oh god, it's Chip all over again, thought Zack, noting that Jenni looked as if she'd just been stabbed.

"Yes, his husband," he said very calmly, finding that he was beginning to enjoy this encounter with homophobia. "I'm his lawfully wedded husband."

"You two are actually _married_?"

"Yep! We're actually _married_ ," said Zack, mimicking her horrified tone. He held up his left hand and pointed to his gold wedding band. "See?"

"Oh!" gasped Jenni.

Zack smiled. "I take it you disapprove of same-sex marriage. Am I right?"

"You most certainly are! Don't you know you're violating God's sacred laws?"

"In _your_ opinion. I have another. All I know for sure is that Robert and I are _not_ violating the sacred laws of the state of Michigan."

"That doesn't matter! You—"

"Look, Jenni. I don't give a shit _what_ your personal beliefs are. But no matter how you feel about it, you'd better give Robert the same level of care you'd give anybody else. If you don't I'm going to your superiors. Is that clear?"

"They'd back me up! This is a _Catholic_ hospital," snapped Jenni.

"I don't care _what_ kind of religious crap this place has as its official creed. Whether you like it or not, you're obligated to treat gay people too, and you'd better do it. Robert didn't _choose_ this hospital, you know. He was brought here because this one was closest and time was of the essence, so you'd better treat him right. And I mean that in both senses of the word. Now do what you came in here to do, and try to remember that you're a professional. I thought that nurses—like doctors—took an oath to help people. Or am I wrong?"

"Well, no, but—"

"Then do your duty, and please keep your belief system to yourself. And I promise that I'll do the same."

Jenni gaped at Zack as he resumed reading the newspaper. She stood silently for several moments, thinking. Then she took Robert's blood pressure and left the room without glancing at Zack again.

Zack sighed in relief. He looked at Robert's face then. _Twelve years it's been now_ , he thought. _Twelve years we've been together. And I've never loved him more than I do right this minute._

Zack felt tears come to his eyes. _Good god, he nearly died today!_ He wiped his eyes. _He's really gonna need me, he thought. I just hope that when he finds out they're gonna have to amputate his leg, he won't think I'll change in any way. Maybe he'll be afraid I won't find him desirable anymore. He might—he's always been insecure in a lot of ways, because of that fucking nutcase of a mother he grew up with. We might need to make some adjustments when we have sex, but we'll figure it out. He'll still be Robert, and that's all that matters to me. He'll still be the only person I want in my bed. I'll just have to spell it out to him very clearly_.

He nodded to himself. _Yeah, money'll be a problem. But at least our house is paid for and we've got something saved up. Good thing the house is all on one level. I'll just need to make some sort of ramp for the front steps. Luckily it's only three steps, plus the step up to get in the door. That might be a little tricky. But I'll figure something out. And I'll have to declutter the rooms and shit like that—well, that's nothing. And I'll have to do all the cooking and laundry too. Well, I don't mind. And it won't be forever anyway. Dr. Hvalko said he'll be able to walk fairly normally again after a while, after he gets used to the prosthesis. And_ —

"Zack?" Robert was awake.

Zack stood up and put a hand on Robert's shoulder. "You sure had a good sleep. How are you feeling?"

"Better ... It doesn't hurt as much."

"That's good. Just say when you need more painkillers, and I'll tell the nurse."

Robert glanced down at himself and tried to lift the blanket.

"Do you really want to see?"

Robert nodded.

Zack lifted the blanket.

Robert took a deep breath. "They're gonna cut off my leg, aren't they?"

"Probably. That's what the doctor recommended."

Robert sighed. "Fuck."

"I know. But don't worry. Everything's gonna be okay."

"Things'll be a lot different though."

"Not in any way that matters. I'm not worried about it, so you shouldn't be either. And may I remind you that this is your _husband_ talking, and I expect you to obey me!"

Robert smiled. "Like the meek and compliant husband that I'm supposed to be, I'll obey you without any questions."

Zack laughed and squeezed Robert's hand.

***
RON MOHRING

MARRIAGE DECODER RING

When he asks, Do you want me to bring home

some ice cream tonight? I of course say yes,

that sounds nice, thinking it will go well

with the brownies he made last night, what's

left of them, which leads me to wonder

if what he's really saying is Please don't

eat the last of the brownies, or is he, was there

a subtext I missed? He's usually so direct, says

exactly what he thinks, lets me know he's horny

by dropping his drawers and waggling like some

silent perv, which I love because I _get it_ ,

the message is abundantly clear. So when

he says he's going out of town to hang

with one of his friends, do I overload

the verb's significance? Do I want to know

beforehand, imagining he's falling for Eric

or Thomas or Bryan, or is it better

to get the scoop after, pressing him for details

as we cuddle with our just desserts? When

he says I love you as he grabs his keys to go

it's like he's speaking through a mask

I can't help but imagine: his face unreadable,

and I want to call out wait, is that for now

or forever, are we on a bridge or a cliff,

how is it possible that you still think

I deserve you?

***
BRAMBLE

_Blood brothers_ , he says, & brings his splashy thumb

to my face. I cringe at the torn skin. Mother's

thread & needle won't mend this error. Rusty

cans & broken glass hide in these weeds. Snakes

in waiting. Barbed wire. Nails. But coming

here was my idea: the squishy thunk of berries

in our buckets worth the purple mess on our hands

& shirts, the scratches & welts, the tiny

claws embedded in our arms. He sucks

his thumb & grins, his bloody teeth a tiger's,

proffers it again, his voice a purr: _Your turn_.

***
BURN

Let's make a fire/ to cure poison;

let's throw on all of our cares.

You bring the wrong men you've chosen

and we'll push them in unawares.

You bring your fall off the wagon;

I'll bring the whiskey and gin.

We'll have a big conflagration

and dance round it 'til we're done in.

I'll bring the clothes that don't fit me.

If you like, you do the same.

Burning the past is so easy;

why isn't burning the shame?

Throw on regret. Throw on reason.

Throw on the mirrors and their lies.

Let's build a fire to cure poison,

and burn away our alibis.

—The italicized opening passage is quoted from Jeffery Beam's poem, "Yule," from his chapbook _Midwinter Fires_ (Seven Kitchens Press, 2011).

***
PETRA KUPPERS

SEED BOMB GLITTER

Succulent, sturdy trunk with feathers. Knobbly ridge girdle

embryonic spikes already ready for studded leather collar.

Bend toward the sun, roots well hidden in sandy soil

trickle effect water creeps its way to your hunger.

Alien feature shades reflect the red-orange disk burn

ultraviolet hyperviolent rootlet tickles a last sip

maroon red from dead otter, cow bones, vulture liver.

Hide before teet-sucking moisture veil

drifts up from the desert each morning.

Lilac hairs spread and hold on, a droplet,

microscope, pearlescent dew sheen declines

into channels of green oval pores. Open sesame.

Welcome harbor, stay for a daynight, brown pleather

humans sprawl boney into empty swimming pool blue.

***
BORDER ZONE

I will eat together with you

I drink my coffee alone.

I will sleep under a blanket.

Cover the floor.

I will roll over it, tame it,

feel irregularities beneath

warm till it offers me

melt or comfort or edge.

Let's all begin together,

hum a song into the fabric,

under the blanket,

against hard wood,

star shiny surface in sand.

My water bottle stems

climate shift, rain tide, dry rot.

Antarctic drift turns to hurricane

red sky brown sky

white world outside glass world

wood worm in the bone.

Compost warmth in the open

street grid shelters bush, a tree,

three hydrants rust shut.

Hardwood disappears.

Copper disappears.

Reverse migration back into

earth molecules

feel irregularities beneath

I will roll over it, stretch

toward sun. Dark loon

ancient crane hoot

river the train

track the ruin rain.

***
DAVID CUMMER

BETWEEN BEMIDJI AND BLACKDUCK

This is where the Baba Yagas of my family live.

Tiny old women, thin, in huge, bulky silver

nitrate dresses

in dusty kitchens without

sinks.

Old ones,

like overexposed photographs,

people who are

weak tea and milk

"There's our soldier boy!" they cry.

"There's our Lockinvar!" Aunt Jeanette calls from the porch door, light framing her as we pull up in the car.

They're my well-thumbed hants,

my well-loved books, crisped at the edges like

cookies.

They're Bob's pipe and crutches,

Nova's laugh, and the flower garden where Aunt Phyllis has stood still stands, and always shall stand in her wedding dress.

I see Uncle John approaching me on the sidewalk,

his face like a repaired photograph.

He leans into me, bones settling as I, having reached the time when I am big and he is little,

receive him,

he leans into me, brittle as a photographic

plate, as the aunt's

china,

and sighs, as Rocky does while sleeping on my lap.

***
CHER FINVER

THE COOKIE MONSTER

Allan's focus was his next fix. That was until he fell asleep at the wheel, lost control, and was ejected violently from his car. Witnesses say the vehicle rolled on feverishly after him. It was as if karma itself crushed him to death, and not the pile of twisted metal. We had argued on the day he died in 2007. Something about me being distant and cold. Allan, the forever victim, always struggling with one issue or another. _He_ certainly did not have any right to judge _me_.

The liquid Methadone had been forgotten after a previous attempt to get clean. Just a few drops added to the beer mug I kept refilling. Allan could hardly keep his eyes open most of the time. That afternoon, chugging his beer, and then mumbling for a refill. _Did I look like a maid?_

There was an investigation done. With the extensive history of drug use and toxicology reports stating Allan had four times the allowed amount of alcohol in his system, the cops quickly write the crash off as an accident. Just another dead addict. No one asks about our fight or for me to retrace my steps that day. I play the sad widow card, except when depositing a check that originated in a sympathy card.

As quickly as I set up a dating profile, my inbox fills. I remember Chad standing out right away, asking about subjects off the beaten path – like my favorite desserts and toys as a child. Chad was also the first suitor to ask to meet in person. A restaurant of my choosing? How nice. Allan hardly ever took me to dinner. Chad was non-threatening and unassuming. Dull is good—no more bad boys. I wanted someone to take care of _me_. I am not bailing anyone out of jail or dealing with any of the other "delights" that comes with loving an addict. Not anymore.

*

Thanks to an accident on a construction site a few years back, Chad had one arm shorter than the other. I thought the millions awarded in his settlement were enough to make the deformed appendage less grotesque to me. It did not. Chad spends our first date asking about my life and telling me how beautiful I am. I sip on some fruity cocktail as my mind trails off. _Someone should tell this guy not to mention his settlement on a dating website. There are gold diggers out there._

I had no children with Allan. Chad is harmless. These are the reasons my apartment is the perfect setting for our second date. This, and there are fewer people to stare at his arm here. I cook the only dish I know how to prepare, spaghetti and meatballs. Chad scarfs it down, praising my non-existing cooking skills with his mouth full.

"After dinner, you wanna watch _Twilight_? I just got it on DVD."

"Sure." Chad takes his sauced-stained napkin, lays it in his lap, as eloquently as he can.

_Yeah, he wants to sleep with me. No dude wants to watch_ Twilight. As Edward and Jacob fight over Bella, I make my next move toward Chad's bank account. I hit pause as Edward and Bella are lying in a meadow.

"Let's take a break." I walk toward my bedroom, hand extended. _Sorry! Habit_. Chad could not take my hand, but he does follow.

I am thankful to see the sun has set as the darkness conceals his imperfections. I lie and tell Chad that I have not slept with anyone since my husband died. Chad does not ask me much about Allan. The fewer questions about Allan, the better. Only having the one arm to carry his weight on, my date has trouble making his way from my mouth down to my bikini line.

"Ouch" is not a word you should say while being... serviced, yet I said it two, maybe three times. _Has he never done this before?_ Chad apologizes. There is no blood flow for me to return the favor. Not that I wanted to. Both embarrassed, I kick Chad out, and he leaves without knowing how _Twilight_ ends. I spend that night tossing and turning, wondering if the money is worth the lousy foreplay and the whole arm thing.

The next morning, I head out to my front patio, welcoming my coffee and first cigarette of the day like an old friend. I notice the foiled-wrapped package and handwritten note right away.

It reads: I am sorry about last night. I made you cookies.

He came back to my place last night and left cookies? Is that creepy or sweet? I take a cautious bite. Chocolate chip cookies, my favorite! I eat them all for breakfast.

*

Trying to reach my asthma inhaler, I collapse in my doorway, the note and balled-up tin foil in hand. My eyes grow more prominent; something is vaguely familiar.

*

Allan was sent to jail for shoplifting a few months before his passing. Addicts, they lie and steal. The taste of freedom and fewer worries I experienced when Allan was locked up only had me thirsting for more. Allan confessed the sin of cheating on me the day of his untimely death. But only after I found the note to my husband from another man.

Allan's funeral service mainly consisted of all _my_ friends and family. Anyone I did not recognize, I should have remembered. I should have remembered the quiet man sitting in the last row. The man who never gave me his condolences. The man with the sling on his arm.

***
MIKE JAMES

ST. FREDDIE MERCURY OF CRUISING PLACE

Sunglasses give mystery. We all need a little. Plus, they reflect

An image back. Forget romance. Just a lingering gaze, a lusty twitch.

Skin might be a desert or a cratered moon, beyond touch.

Might be airbrushed into a landscape on the other side of want.

When you pace the sidewalks at night you always think

Some men can hit any note in or out of bed. Others just prance.

Names, numbers, limericks, and curses decorate so many bathroom stalls.

Circle your name with a marker. Write out a joke told better with a lisp.

Not every phrase starts with _Darling_ or _My dear_. That's sad, but correctable.

You smile archly, with a twist. And, of course, close your eyes when you wish.

***

ST. CANDY DARLING

Candy Darling is the patron saint of disappointment. Some angels, born without

Wings. Country songs tell us this while we drink, as does disco while we dance.

Some lizards discard their tails when frightened. And some women let go of

Extra appendages. Candy Darling had a music box, wound tight, for a heart.

Eyeliner, hair dye, and glitter are three necessary ingredients for glamour.

Embellish stories. Use hairspray if you must. Candy would say you must.

_Candy Darling is the most gorgeous woman who ever lived_ , Christopher Hart,

In conversation, October 2017. Christopher, happily married. Mostly straight.

Candy's drag friend Jackie loved Candy, the comic strip _Nancy_ , and vanilla ice cream.

Sometimes they would split an ice cream cone on the street and giggle over sprinkles.

In one dream I had, Candy Darling and Marlene Dietrich looked like sisters.

They sang duets in a black and white bar where smoke made halos in bad light.

***
JEE LEONG KOH

THE REGULAR

for Thomas Nguy (Congee Bowery Restaurant, NYC, circa 2010)

The sons of Singapore fly from the army,

if they can, but young Thomas flew to it.

They do not want two years of hentak kaki,

marching in place, the non-action of action.

Thomas was tired of moving with his parents

from Nam to Singapore to the USA.

Reversing his atlas-spanning odyssey,

he signed up as an army regular.

At night, he heard his commanding officers

enter their men's barracks, and their men too,

their shadows flitting back and forth, like moths,

across the spotless shutters of his room.

Bastards again in the morning, they would slip

in a soft look when their recruit was looking.

***
STEVEN CORDOVA

THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY

Dorian Gray falls in love with an actress

only to go backstage and find the she

playing Ophelia is in fact a _he_ —

and with pancake half removed—

a rather fetching little he at that.

Into the dingy backstage dressing room

ambulates Lord Henry, the decadent dandy

who's been quite the dark Lord, inducting Dorian

into London's underworld of gay degeneracy.

Lord Henry doesn't like Dorian's thespian.

The middle-aged Henry wants Dorian all to himself.

And really, who can blame such a Lord?

As is usual, from repression comes tragedy

and, at Lord Henry's insistence—

"Actors only act like they love you, Dorian!"—

Dorian tell his boy to get himself to a nunnery

and the boy, like Ophelia, drowns himself.

Whether it's guilt or just a story-telling convention,

Dorian takes to opium and drink, rent boys.

On the tail end of such a sex 'n' drug run,

Dorian, like his aging portrait, begins to nod off.

His perceptions grow psychedelic and candle-lit.

"Mr. Wilde," Dorian asks his demiurge, "is that not

Lord Henry licking his mustachioed lips?

Does the good Lord mean to kiss my doom?"

***
WALT WHITMAN: AMERICAN POET

an exhibition at NYPL

Gape at a lock

of the dead man's hair,

guffaw at Homer Simpson

bellowing, " _Walt friggin' Whitman!_

_Leaves of Grass, my ass!_ " & then as if

the poet himself is smiling down—

in gratitude!—upon me!—the hot day

cools & the humidity lifts: I emerge

from the vast athenaeum

& I walk down cavernous 5th Ave.—

from 42nd down to 14th Streets—

cruising every friggin' man I can.

***
COVID CRUISING

I spot him as I approach the post office at Newkirk & East 16th. Something old yet new in me rises then falls as I assess the situation. _It_ is old because _it_ has always been there; new because I haven't had much of a chance to exercise it lately, my prowess. And _its_ assessment is that I have little hope of meeting him. Little hope, even, of getting a better look at him. He's landed a spot considerably ahead of me in the gradually-growing line which snakes its way round Newkirk to East 16th.

Imagine then my simple happiness when, finally, it's my turn to enter the small, dark, utterly charming US post office, my eyes adjusting to a change of light, outdoors to in, _and there he stands_ , pen in hand, taking his time as he addresses a small stack of envelopes with great care.

A minute, maybe two, passes.

"Week six and your hair still looks great," I proffer.

"Oh, thanks," he smiles with his eyes, running his long fingers through his long blond-brown mane so that it stands higher atop his suntanned forehead. The effect is that he appears even taller, thinner than he already is. He recalls one of those illustrations, an artist's rendering of a dinosaur with a flashy head ridge, the better to attract a mate.

"Thanks," he says again. "But I think I'll have to have my girlfriend trim it. Soon."

"Me, I have to wear this hat," I joke. "I look like a caveman without it. So you hold on to that girlfriend, you hear?"

"I will," he winks. "And I'm sure you look fine under that hat."

"Well," I blush. "Enjoy the nice day."

"You, too," he smiles once more with those eyes.

He adjusts his mask and steps out into the light.

***
SCOTT HIGHTOWER

BROMANCE AMONG THE INCEL

Where is the perfect crush gift, the sixties ID

bracelet or little necklace update: "Cocks not

Glocks"? The big bling today is the cold-steel rifle,

worn with baseball cap and concealing gaiter.

Accessory: a Confederate Flag, old rebel rag; heritage,

if hate is your heritage. Otherwise, it is just a symbol

of hate; the US Constitution is clear: the right "to keep

and bear." Nowhere is there a right "to purchase

and own," to brandish as a statement of intimidation,

rage, or some over-heated adolescent defensiveness.

In spite of your terror with impermanence and change,

you're cocked and ready... to bravely annunciate your

virginity or sexual inactivity... or to clearly dramatize

your preference while hoping to snag a road gig.

_Note_ : The term "involuntary" + "celibate" (shortened to "incel") refers to self-identifying members of a subculture based around the inability to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as "inceldom" or "incelibacy."

***
WE DREAM IN THE SAME BED

We are two creatures

holding hands in our sleep

heading over the same waterfall.

***
PARTNERS: VANITAS

( _Mannix_ : "Woman in the Shadows," 1971)

The suave, chisel-lipped Soviet purchaser

of a historical manuscript, Viktor Gruniev,

bends over in front of Joe Mannix

(Mike Connors). For a moment,

there is an oddly lingering butt shot,

almost as long as the one of Robert Mitchum

re-boarding in his wet pants just after

he, his boy, and Marilyn Monroe

escape a very rough river run.

Hard to find an honest man these days.

The debonair, photogenic Russian

(Eric Braeden) stands and turns around

aiming a handgun. There is nothing

minxish about him. He means business.

They are "partners for the moment."

And will remain so till the mystery

has unwound and they stand

side-by-side in the closing shot.

Actor Mike Connors, brown eyes,

athletically strapping, thick eye brows,

fraternity coiffed, and marvelous,

is actually Armenian-American

Krekor Ohanian.

His is the era of 70s (The Dawning

of the Age of Aquarius, Baby!)

West Coast sideburns, buttoned-down collars,

stylish silk patterned neckties (sometimes

worn and tied at a hip as an a-symmetrical

sash... Why not?) and wide-lapeled

tweed herringbone jackets

and forest-green convertibles.

Mannix is the sort of guy

who will crash his whole body

through a window to save

a doctor's kidnapped son,

who always wanted

a family to end up

with something under the tree.

Would chivalrously crash

his green convertible (with phone)

through a barn door

or into something just off one

of the shoulder of the road

to save an attractive woman

caught up in mischief.

"There is never an easy way

To say it... He's dead."

"There is no future

In being a Sunday night girl."

"... to light a cigar, that's all."

"How about dinner?"

"What are you looking for?"

"It's tree toads"... and––

at the end of the rainbow––

hand guns. Right in the middle

of the payoff. "I don't know

what you're talking about."

"Listen. There's somebody coming."

Once, he actually slid down the hard

Plastic rail of an up escalator.

Natty Mannix (seventeen years

after Kay Weston)––clean-shaven,

private, understanding,

and... cupiditous––worked

with stylish Peggy (Gail

Fisher), a poised, sultry alto.

An amorous woman with elegant,

hyper refined eyebrows; sort of

a Della Street _Perry Mason_ update.

And, just like portly Cannon,

between _Peter Gunn_ and _The Rockford_

_Files_ ("you can wait in the study

at the top of the stairs"), Mannix,

Mr. Moonbeam––slightly

perfumed, but in an that ever

so manly carefree sort of way––

almost always gets his man.

***
ALFRED CORN

MARS

Though we met the day after I signed the deed for the Fifteenth Street apartment, Steve and I didn't get to be close friends—at least, before his bad luck got underway. He was just the six-foot-two guy with the boxer's build who lived next door. Our bedrooms shared a wall, my side of it a glaring bone-white I soon painted café au lait. I seldom saw my neighbors and never tried to know much about them, partly because they didn't try back; but, just from surface clues, I gathered Steve and I were the only gay men on the sixth floor.

The Wednesday after moving day, my snazzy or dubious belongings still stacked in the living room, I rang Steve's bell, hoping to borrow a hammer. We'd only just said hello in the hallway the day before, so I hadn't really had time to size him up. When the door opened, bang, there he was in a tank top and shorts, as if he'd been expecting a visit and wanted to bring forward his strongest assets. But how could he have known? He couldn't, so I guess he was, like a good Boy Scout, always prepared. He had the sort of ringlety short hair that doesn't need supervision anyway, though just possibly it had started out in life a different color from its current chestnut brown.

As his good deed for the day, he volunteered to help me hang pictures, and during the measuring and eyeballing and hammering process, which got the supersized and handsomely matted photographs relocated where they'd look best, we began to exchange verbal résumés. Corporate accountant? Certainly not built like one. Meanwhile, he sounded sincere when he said it was cool that I was a photographer and that he loved the shots we were putting up on the walls. I liked his hoarse voice, a little higher pitched than you'd expect, and with a Midwestern accent describable as corn-fed if you wanted to be condescending. As soon as it was clear he was unattached, I made sure to tell him about my recent breakup and having to leave my partner's place down in the Village. By then I'd developed and rehearsed a standard rap about it being a smart move to have my own base of activities for a change, you get so tired of compromising with another person's living habits. Also, I wanted to see if what people said about Chelsea was accurate—in theory, the neighborhood of choice for up-to-date single guys who had begun to move there in the late Eighties and celebrate the end of the Reagan era. A celebration that automatically assumed his replacement was going to be an improvement.

My casual suggestion that we go for dinner he accepted innocently, without a smirk or a missed beat. The apartment was still a mess, so I was eager to spring myself from it for an hour or so, and have a quiet, maybe spicy meal somewhere. Although, in fact, Chelsea isn't so sold on being quiet, and instead of spicy we ended up with Italian. Walking back to Fifteenth Street, mellow from a shared bottle of cabernet, we decided not to end the evening just yet and have another drink, but indoors. Remembering the miscellaneous heaps of whatnot all over my three rooms, accidents just waiting to happen, I asked if we could do it at his place.

He'd painted his walls gray and everything looked as impersonal as a hotel lobby, the expensive dullness only emphasized by track lighting. He had no photographs or paintings, just nicely framed reproductions of garden-variety images like Van Gogh's _Sunflowers_. I drifted around, pretending interest in the surroundings, swirling my wine in its big globe, while he made unsurprising comments about this or that piece of furniture or knicknack. In the bedroom there was a picture not as quickly identifiable as the others, an Old Master portrait, mythological probably, of a bearded man, wearing a helmet and holding a sword. The posed military figure's torso was bare, and looking at it you registered that the model wasn't young, distinctly weathered and wrinkled—odd for a classical subject. I waved my glass at it and said, "What's the painting?"

Steve looked at it, paused, and then said, "I can't remember." He took it off the wall and turned it around, read the label and then said, "It's _Mars_ , by Diego Velazquez. It's not a real painting, it's a reproduction."

"Oh, I knew that. But... you liked it because he's... sort of a warrior, is that it?" We stared at each other longer than the standard three seconds, Steve the first to blink. It occurred to me that he was a little older than I'd guessed. Also, that, as a follower of the Chelsea age code, he probably considered himself on the verge of obsolescence. The picture must be an early warning to anybody who got as far as the bedroom that they weren't going to get a specimen of rubbery youth. Myself, I never insisted on flawless stats, to me a little age isn't a bad thing at all. Anyway, be here now! Drink up! I put down the glass, closed the short distance between us, and managed an approximation of a bear hug. He accepted it, but then, after a few exploratory clinches, stepped back and said, "I don't think we know each other well enough yet."

True enough, but knowing each other better probably wouldn't add much to the skin-deep scenario already in play. Mere animal magnetism ought to be enough for uncomplicated, short-term liaisons. Bruised by my recent breakup, I wasn't in the market for anything serious yet, so uncomplicated, skin-deep overnights suited me just fine. But what can you do, we were one short for tango: I backed off and said I should be going. Steve walked me to the door and before it closed flashed some nice dental work when I said, "Ciao."

Over the next two weeks we met several times, shared a couple of meals, and did some more fumbling, even a little snogging. And yet never quite got to the point, so, bar by bar, the original electric fire faded and cooled. Steve became just my neighbor, someone I spoke to when we happened to be riding the elevator together, or traded jokes with when we were both watering straggly evergreens on our adjacent balconies. Judging from thumps, groans, and loud laughter heard through the shared wall of our bedrooms (shoddy modern construction practices!), he seldom spent a night alone and clearly didn't need to worry about being carded for having gone over the age limit. When you have quick black eyes and a square jaw like Steve's, heightened by the correct amount of facial hair as dictated by this year's trends, and when you faithfully do your lifts and reps and the stair machine, Chelsea offers dozens of daily opportunities. For an impressive number of people, those opportunities make staying at home with the other member of your civil union look tame and sleepy, as, to be honest, it is in many ways. My long effort at exclusive partnership had come to an end the year before partly because we'd both found a typically suburban substitute for mutual monotony. That didn't mean the omnivorous approach felt natural and easy, not yet. There was no doubt I was overmatched in singles skills by Steve. OK, but only in that one field of endeavor. I'd put him in the category of the likable but not over-bright; realizing of course that his type usually does better in the quest for good times than the minority I belonged to—the ironic, the over-thoughtful, the chronically dissatisfied. Anyway, the work I was doing, which had moved away from photojournalism into something more like art, was beginning to get recognized. So professional success took up the slack from any self-doubt I might have felt from failing to market myself effectively at the bars and clubs. Let him enjoy his butterfly existence, I had my Lasting Contribution to make.

These self-bolstering terms of comparison didn't prepare me for the seriousness of the conversation we had about five months after I moved in. Late August rain had been coming down in gallons and kegs, blown sideways by winds sent up from the latest Gulf coast hurricane. We both lunged into the lobby at almost the same moment, shaking the water off our umbrellas, which were still dripping when we stepped into the elevator. During the ride up, he sneezed and said, "If you've got a minute, do you want to have a drink?"

"Uh, sure. Mine or yours?"

"Mine, I've got this." He pulled from his shopping bag a fifth of Laphraoig.

Sipping his shot glass a few minutes later, he put his stocking feet on the coffee table and said, "Got some bad news today." Another sip and then, "They did some tests at the hospital. There's, um, you know, a tumor."

My eyes widened, but I tried not to sound alarmist. "Oh. I'm sorry. That's really... disturbing." A little smile twitched at the corner of his mouth but he said nothing. So I pushed on with, "But they've got fantastic treatments these days, really sophisticated operating techniques, and then of course chemo, et cetera."

"It's in the liver."

"Oh my God. What do they—" Steve just looked at me.

*

I guess this counts as the watershed between the old and the new Steve, I mean, my before-and-after sense of him. When I asked if he'd called his family, he said he hadn't. His father and mother both had pronounced some sort of DIY excommunication of him many years earlier, when he'd made his "coming out" phone call. He was still in touch with his sister, but it wasn't a close relationship, and he hadn't contacted her yet. Apparently I was the first person he'd come out to about the cancer, an admission that made me uncomfortable. It struck me that he never mentioned having any close friends. He had swarms of meetups that lasted for a night, but no one ever asks for a second audition in this part of town.

Why didn't I ask myself if I actually _wanted_ the responsibility of being his "contact person"? Just didn't; and soon became Steve's sole channel of communication to the outside world. Within a month his disability insurance kicked in, and, either because he didn't have the energy or else the ambition, he stopped going out. The bedroom wall was quiet—no, not entirely, once or twice I heard low-pitched groans seep through it in the dead of night. He had meals delivered and anything else he needed. I'd hear the pizza or Chinese takeout delivery guy ring his bell around 6:30 every evening. About three times a week I would ring it myself. Sometimes I'd knock gently instead and wait the minutes it took for him to slide out of bed and stumble over to let me in. Eventually, as he got weaker, he told me that the lock on the sliding glass door to the balcony was broken and that, if the bell didn't get an answer, all I had to do was step over the iron balustrade separating us and come on in. I nodded but said I was sure it wouldn't be necessary—a lame response, just what you'd expect from someone with zero experience in talking to the terminally ill.

At first I avoided thinking the word "terminal," but after a couple of months there was no way not to. Because Steve hated hospitals, he worked it out with his medical advisors that he would stay at home. A full-time caretaker was arranged, and on his first day of duty I was invited to meet him. A man about thirty years old, Sudanese he said, very well-groomed, and speaking enough English to do his job. It was the era when many gay men, because of the epidemic, ended up with caretakers, and the odd thing is that all those I ever met were invariably African, a fact I've never heard explained.

Once Yoel (that was his name) was in place, no doubt I could have, without a bad conscience, stopped looking in on Steve so much. But it seemed to me that I ought to do it _more_ , to make sure he was getting good care. Even though my intuition was that Steve had had good luck in finding Yoel. Times when I did drop by, the apartment looked tidy, Steve seemed to be comfortably tucked in, and, if I asked him how things were going, he'd make a hand gesture signifying he was fine. Accepting his self-estimate required overlooking the fact that he was bone thin and had jaundice; but he was clean and so were his sheets. I considered it outrageous how his family didn't visit him, not even his sister. He himself didn't react when I said that, just half shrugged and stared at me with his dark, glistening eyes. To judge by the surface, he didn't seem to need comforting, and as the weeks trundled on I began to feel useless, maybe even a little bit of an intrusion distracting him from an important job he had to do.

The one thing I was faithful about was taking Steve's mail to the post office, and the snoop in me noticed that there were never any letters to family members. No, except for bills, all the letters were addressed to charitable institutions, and you didn't have to be Sam Spade to detect that they contained checks. In neat, accountant fashion, Steve was distributing his material wealth, and not only to organizations devoted to cancer research or the Red Cross, but other groups I hadn't heard of. He'd been doing research, finding charities not especially well known that might need donations. Looking at all the envelopes, I began to feel selfish and tight-fisted. I even wrote a few checks myself to some of the more interesting organizations.

One Saturday noon during a lunchtime visit, I noticed that there was now a rosary hanging from the bedpost and well within his range of vision. For the time I'd known him, he'd never mentioned going to mass. However, once a Catholic, always a Catholic, even when you're an atheist. Sometimes I wish I'd been brainwashed into being a believer, but, no, my family was secular, for us all religion proved was a failure in education. Besides you'd have to get over the prejudice that kneeling and opening your mouth so that a disc of white stuff could be stuck on your tongue like a postage stamp was in bad taste. Even so, here's a scene that keeps coming back to me: a discussion we had one night about the afterlife, with Steve telling me I was dead wrong not to believe in it. One way or another, we were all going to resurface on the "other side." And that in some big or small way, we all do survive death. I could see he thought I was trivial-minded or soulless. OK, but soulless comes in different packages.

*

The letters (and disbursements) stopped when Steve became too weak to lift his hand to write. No more than a week later he went into a coma, as Yoel told me when he answered my knock. I asked if I could see Steve, and with no hesitation he took me into the bedroom. Steve was clean but motionless, his breathing audible. Everything in its place, the sheets, the comforter, the rosary, the bedside lamp, and the picture of Mars. Steve was still alive, but the thin face and shrunken limbs made him look like someone mortally wounded, left behind on a battlefield after the shelling has stopped and the troops have gone off with their loot. Too bad I hadn't given him, while he was still conscious, a last hug. Now the gesture was pointless and, besides, with an outsider there, it would have felt—I don't know, self-dramatizing or something.

I dropped by the next evening and made another five-minute visit. Looking at Yoel, I sensed his fatigue. The kind of vigil his job forced him to keep, even though he'd had a lot of experience, made me cringe, just to think of it. Also, I'd noticed that every time I looked in, there was an empty pizza container in the kitchen. Fast food is only bearable for a couple of days in succession, after which it becomes prison fare. It came to me that I should make Yoel something to eat. I remembered a recipe for a North African dish that used chickpeas and root vegetables, spiced with saffron, cumin, and cinnamon, and not so difficult to prepare. I had those ingredients and nothing on for the evening, so I revved up a George Michael album and got to work. Rattling pots took my mind off the negative aspects of the situation, and the result was soon ready.

Yoel hadn't expected me to knock again. When he opened the door, he looked at me intently and then at the plate I had in my hand. I said, "I brought you this, in case you're hungry."

His gaze flicked back and forth between my eyes and the plate, but then he took it from me and said, "Would you like to see Steve?"

We walked into the bedroom lit by the one lamp and now very dim. I sat down and looked at Steve, whose mouth was partly open, breathing, breathing, breathing. Yoel said, "Is not going to be long time." The impartial finality of expertise. We sat and then I urged Yoel to have his meal; otherwise it would get cold. Reluctantly, he stood, went to get a fork and began eating.

"Your family is in Sudan?"

"No. They died. After I left, my town was... attack. Soldiers kill everybody. You have heard of this in Sudan?"

I nodded. "That's terrible. I'm so sorry. Really awful." He didn't lift his eyes from the plate. We sat in a silence broken only by Steve's breathing. The lamp seemed no brighter than a candle, the rheostat must have been turned down. There were shadows in the corners of the room, but at least they didn't move, as they would have done in candlelight.

Yoel had finished about half the plate but then set it down and said, "I will have rest later." He looked at me and then stood. That was my signal, so I stood, too, and said I had to be going. At the door, I turned and saw him still standing and looking at me.

*

A restless night, so I was glad I didn't have any assignments the next day. The shoot for Details was scheduled for Friday, but that was three days off. I just puttered around, opening and shutting cabinets and drawers, trying to clarify my thoughts about what was happening next door. When the bell rang, I instantly knew it would be Yoel. Recessed lighting in the hallway ceiling marked out his face as a high-contrast study in planes and shadows. He held out the oversized white plate I'd given him, cleared of its meal now and apparently washed and dried. "Thank you, was very good." He said this in a voice not much above a whisper, in the slow, rounded Sudanese voice that had made a strong impression when we first met. Again I noticed the truthful eyes, the finely calibrated gestures, the strong body that stretched the material of his white cotton shirt. After a pause he said, "This morning Steve have pass away."

I shook my head. "Oh God. Would you like to come in?"

"Well, for a minute I would like."

He didn't want coffee or anything else, so we lowered ourselves into armchairs, Yoel's eyes ranging around the room at random. New York apartments not in the luxury category are small, and there wasn't much to appreciate. Once seated, Yoel and I were less than a yard apart. "Did they call for the—did they pick Steve up yet?"

"Not yet. Later today, they say. I have address of the funeral place if you will want it." His fingers dipped into a shirt pocket to pull out a card that he handed to me with something like a flourish. I glanced at the sober print and slipped it into my pocket.

"I never go to funerals. I used to, but, then, after I went to, oh, it must be over thirty of them last year, I decided that was enough. It's been the Year of the Memorial Service for me." He looked off to the side (probably not understanding) and down at his lap. "I think Steve said he was in touch with his sister?" He nodded. "Though not his parents."

"I don't know."

"Uh, I just wanted to say thank you for taking care of Steve. You did a wonderful job, and I know he was really grateful." (I'm a joke at making appropriate serious speeches.)

A silence, and then he cleared his throat. "I thank you again for the food." He was standing and holding out a hand, soft and dry to the touch, powered by his impressive arm. Our eyes met and sounded each other out. But the gloomy circumstances put a pall on things, and I took my hand away. I saw him to the door and closed it after him.

My apartment, with its geometric rug and Aalto furniture looked empty and chilly, even though sun was pouring in from the sliding glass doors onto the balcony. Most likely Yoel would be leaving in an hour or two and we'd never speak again. The naïve side of me dislikes to the point of queasiness these brief acquaintances, exchanges that seem humanly authentic but then come to an end with blank abruptness. People are brought into accidental contact with each other, there's something like minds touching, a sensation of friendliness and respect; and then both parties are swept away toward the rest of their lives. It happens all the time in the city, but it's not a topic I've ever heard discussed, so maybe I'm the only one that's bothered by it. My hand rummaged around in my trouser pocket and pulled out the card. I was going to throw it away, and then I noticed that on the back of it, written in careful block letters was YOEL, followed by a telephone number. Huh, isn't that interesting...

*

At some point just before nightfall I heard people in the hallway, voices, the sound of something metal, wheels rolling, Steve's door open and close. I was tempted to step outside and have a look, but then thought how unpleasant gawking is to people on the receiving end. So when the door opened again, I didn't move, instead just imagined visuals to go with the sound outside—some sort of gurney with a body bag on it, men in dark clothes moving slowly towards the elevator. In less than a minute everything was silent. I must have left on one of the taps in the kitchen because I could hear a trickle of water running into the drain. Turning it off was at least a distraction, but as soon as that was taken care of, what next? I made an experimental effort to cry and got nowhere, just some hoarse breathing. Tears are one more capacity that's been shed somewhere along the road. I console myself with the thought that at least I know what I should feel, even if expression is blocked.

I hadn't met Steve's sister, all that he'd told me was that she didn't care for his "lifestyle." Even so, there was some sort of minimal communication between them, and I assumed she was his heir. Before long she'd fly into the city and come to clear out the apartment, a huge and hellish chore, because he had a lot of stuff very little of which she'd probably want to keep. For no real reason, I hoped he'd thrown out the porn movies, etc. After sifting through his drawers for valuables, chances are she'd hire someone to just empty the place. And that thought led to my little... infraction, my petty larceny. I went out onto the balcony and looked around. The afterglow of early evening still shone behind the black outline of surrounding buildings. One leg, then the other went over the balustrade separating my balcony from Steve's. Fearless Captain Marvel walked to the glass door, tugged, and, sure enough, it slid open.

Though everything was dim and still, the rooms felt (I knew this was only a feeling) inhabited. Instead of indignation, the surroundings gave out a sensation of, what, modest welcome, as though curtains and unlit lamps and sofa were saying, "Good, I'm glad you came." There was Steve's empty bed, stripped of its cover. And above it, the picture of Mars, which I could barely see, though well enough to go over to it. I caught either side of the gilt frame, lifted slightly, and took it off its nail. Not heavy, and not the least of an encumbrance when I stepped back over the metal bar separating our balconies, the lime-green arbor vitae brushing my leg as I passed.

Back inside, I put the picture on the floor, leaning it against the wall. Steve's battered old veteran. No need to decide instantly where to hang it, that could wait until tomorrow. But I was determined to put it up somewhere among my own photographs, those that Steve had said were So Cool. In the interim I'd acquired my own hammer, no need for a second theft. And I had plenty of nails. Bang, bang, bang. There. Job done. Picture's up. Embarrassing bad taste, but _Mars_ had found his place of honor, a décor mismatch not worthy of my stylish neighborhood. I could already imagine what friends would say. Depending on how close we are, I will or won't tell them the story. As for Yoel, if he ends up seeing it, I'll explain. I'm pretty sure he'll understand. Think of all he's seen in his life. He'll get it. Soon as I work up the nerve to call him.

***
DON CELLINI

TO MY EX-

We both knew

but neither

could admit it.

An occasional

phone call,

a postcard,

where something

of the old

still remained.

You called once

and asked

to see me.

You were

visiting from

California,

staying with

your parents

in Tuscarawas.

I had to work,

it would have been

too far

it would be

impossible,

I said.

Later, years

later, I discovered

you had died

shortly after

your visit.

Now, just

the empty

picture frame,

quiet, love.

***
SEAN J. MAHONEY

WALKING LA JOLLA

_Hallelujah_ played from every beach shop

Around 3pm

Typical sea day

Breezy as Wheaties outside with sun

Leonard had left

Through that crack

In everything that the light entered from

When almost all

Got said and done

I imagined us again in a tub of pink sea salts

Though this day

We had yet met

At the laboratory of democracy and faith

Before we could kiss

Or hold the other

And embrace our grace as one fault being

Around 3pm

Just not another

Sea day when your midnight fail takes

Your mouth away

Leaving a word

For all to taste...however chosen...

***
SHE FUCKED ME WITH PUNCTUATION

She fucked me with punctuation.

Tied me with ellipsis, with capital L's,

Pinned me to a wall with brackets.

She fucked me with what some would call

Inspiration or delicious cold fantasy

But neither of us danced like whirling.

She fucked me with brains and brawn.

She tapped me with procedural votes

And the longest filibuster ever known.

She fucked me looping in a roller

Coaster. Screaming I churned and my head

Spun. She laughed and poked. I asked for her.

She thrummed me thoroughly with rhythm,

With drum and bass, she fucked me through

Loops and samples, cane-fucked my apps.

Sweet bitch vomit dye she hurled upon

My junk. She let it burn and stain there. Before

Me her damn dripping mouth, swimmingly...

***
VICTOR BARNUEVO VELASCO

MARCO'S BODY

Marco counted in his mind the cars that passed by since he positioned himself in the corner of Orosa and Padre Faura. Manila at 10 in the evening had always been a vaporous trance and he needed figures to be unmistakable. Seven was what he counted. Seven cars: three red, two white, one black, and one that looked gray in the dark. He counted them again. Seven: four that whizzed by, two that slowed down before speeding up, and one that stopped for a minute and then careened like lightning.

Damn, he muttered, it looks like it will take me until midnight to get lucky.

He looked up the streetlamp to make sure he could be spotted from a distance. The corner did not seem to bring him much luck these past weeks, but neither did the other corners. Luck seemed to be running out in this city of hope and haze, he sighed.

A red car was approaching. Eight, he counted, and then groaned as it zipped away.

He squeezed his arms: solid but ready for tenderness. Two arms: two hundred pesos. His hand slid down his thighs: round, firm, filled with expectations: two hundred pesos. He rubbed his chest, down to his abs: rock-hard: three hundred pesos. He ran a finger on his lips and tasted them with his tongue: honey sweet, soft. Depending on what was requested, three or four hundred pesos.

Marco reminded himself that it was much easier to price one's body by senses than by weight; the value was much easier to adjust.

Nine: red; it slowed down and made a stop. Marco sucked his gut and pumped his chest, adjusting his body under the light. The car window rolled down, it was dark inside.

How much, asked the dark.

Marco ran a quick calculation in his mind, summing up his body parts: one thousand pesos, he replied with a smile.

Too much, rejoined the dark, and then zoomed away.

Marco suddenly felt weak. He was stunned when he realized that he lost his two legs. So this was why I felt compacted, he thought.

He slithered to the center of light and scanned his body. He also lost his left arm. Damn, he almost cried, that's probably why they found me pricey. Nine cars had passed by and nine parts of his body had been carried away: two legs, five fingers, a palm, and an arm. He resolved to adjust his price.

Ten: gray, stopping directly in front. A window rolled down. Marco grinned, licked his lips, and pulled his abs.

How much, asked the car. Marco calculated what was left for eight hundred pesos.

Seven hundred, he heard himself instead.

One second passed. Two. Three. Four dozen heartbeats shuddered Marco.

Too much, replied the car, five hundred.

OK, Marco agreed in half a beat.

A door opened, Marco got in. He could barely see the driver: all bones and no teeth. Damn, Marco hissed, this is definitely damned.

Marco felt cold trembling fingers on his throat. They traveled down his chest, abs, belly, balls, searching for something else.

Feels juicy, the driver cackled. The car sped up and a strong wind blew though the open window. Marco's right arm flew away, tossed back to the street corner. His ears detached from his face, as did his nose, and lips. Part by part his body unfastened and scattered on the street.

Damn, he thought, nothing but my cock will be left by the time we make it to bed.

Oh well, he sighed. He promised himself that in the morning he would search and gather his body again.

***

DUSTIN BROOKSHIRE

WANTING TO FALL IN LOVE WITH A NEW YORK CITY MAN WHILE YOU LIVE IN ATLANTA

is frustrating,

like presenting a BOGO coupon

a day after it expires,

or getting a flat at 2:00am three miles from home.

Feelings vary like the weather—

you want to touch his face,

look into his green eyes.

Hell. You just want to sit beside him,

but with 863 miles between all you can do is text—

neither of you like to talk on the phone,

even though you both confess it makes you hard

when you hear the other's voice.

Sex.

None. Remember the miles?

Frustrated again— like you finally found your umbrella

after a frantic search but when you step into the downpour

it doesn't open. (He doesn't even like phone sex!)

Then there's the moment he tells you that he cares

about you in a way that could be something,

if you lived in the same city.

You tell him your mind is an open

as the miles between you,

but you remember your attention span

and need to be desired and your love of sex.

Wanting to love a New York City man

when you live in Atlanta is better left for daydreams,

like the ones you have about winning the lottery.

***

FURIOUS CLEANING

after Maureen Seaton's "Furious Cooking"

It's the kind of cleaning that begins

with spitting, yelling, and cursing

because you can't believe he—

you let it get so damn bad.

You inventory the papers, clothes, random

plates, and the lilies he bought to make you smile—

label everything _his_ or _mine_.

_His_ is destined for the garbage

bag you open with a fast swoop.

The air doesn't even fill the bag

before you sling the first item inside

looking for the next version of him

while eyeing those fucking lilies.

It's the kind of cleaning

that makes you sweat like you're working in the yard,

the kind that makes you stop to catch your breath.

The kind of cleaning that is cathartic like a Sexton poem,

serves retribution like a Dante punishment,

that cleanses like bleach on the floor.

I remember my mother standing at the sink

staring into her task of diluting bleach,

then on hands and knees scrubbing

an already spotless floor.

Tears fell from her eyes

as she dipped sponge in water,

mumbling the bathroom is next

all the while cursing my fathers name,

cleansing every spot named Christina.

***
DIANE R. WIENER

STONE

A friend of mine and I once had an exchange on social media about looking at the water to learn about the air. As part of the discussion, I responded: _We float holding our breath, we exhale into bubbling wisdom, we remember that we are born as flipping fish, we learn to die as writhing worms. The unedited muddy world surrounds us, volcanic and igneous, alike_.

I have always thought along these lines. My favorite writers have given me helpful vocabulary to use in finding ways to express my worldview, as have close friends, my counselor, and trusted family—sanguineous and chosen.

*

Well before anxiety and depression polluted my interpretations and, arguably, reconfigured my wiring (so that I had to take it back, later on), I felt an infinite regressus as pleasing and curious—at least once. As a toddler, I sat on the front lawn in front of the shrubs. I think they were azaleas. I reached down, grabbed a handful of small stones, and placed them in my mouth. Perhaps I closed my eyes, but I am unsure. Whirling and tasting the stones, I thought about what I was thinking about, and then thought about the thinking about the thinking. It went on that way, my happily unhygienic communion; I could sense the ideas opening up into the sky accompanied by light, sound, and shapes. The sensate forms folded upon one another in immeasurable layers. I was a baby animist in the _déjà vu_ grass, embraced by synesthesia.

*

When I was eight or ten—maybe a bit younger, as it seems to me now—there was a spot on the landing in between the first and second floor staircases in my parents' house where I used to go to listen to a private congregation. This bodiless group was comprised of not-yet-born, extant, and already gone children in ongoing conversation. They whispered, mostly, but sometimes their intergenerational interactions were noisier. I called them the sametime children; they were aware of this name, and seemed to accept it.

I didn't know, yet, about the Jewish mystical concept of the Hall of Souls, which I later came to believe was what I had been sensing, when I was a kid. Tristy the Airedale was often lying on the landing when the sametime children showed up, and it was my belief that he bore witness with me. My mother was alarmed when I sat near her one day and told her of my experience. Perhaps I seemed scared, which would have been understandable. Thankfully, she didn't take me to a shrink. Instead, she looked at me and explained plainly that they weren't real, so I had no need to be frightened.

I never heard them again. I missed them, but was also relieved, in some respects, aware that this experience had been unusual. I was freaky enough, already, that much was clear. Later, I came to think that some of the people who were close to me in my adult life had been among the entities I met vocally on that stairwell threshold.

*

After school, around age six or seven, I came home and looked for Hashem under my bed, because Mora had told us in Yeshiva that God was everywhere. " _Hashhhheeemmmmm_ , where are you? _Adoshem_?" my mother heard me calling, then found me in my room lifting the bedskirt and peeking in the dark below. She thought my seeking out God prosaically was endearing, and sometimes told people about it—including me—when I was older.

*

I didn't have pica, and still don't; putting stones in my mouth remains joyous.

*

I can still feel the eels under the wet sand by the beach rocks near our house when the undertow pulled at my small flat feet.

*

If I had a teleporter, I would bring stones to the top of Kilimanjaro. It would be cool to ride on a steampunk dirigible, a stone in my pocket. While airborne, I would summon Dr. Doolittle, to ask if I could hang out with him atop the great pink sea snail—and possibly the Luna moth—if they all concurred. With reptilian permission, I wouldn't mind flying among pterodactyls. Mary Poppins could soar by, at any moment. Holding a stone, I would likely have the _chutzpah_ to let Julie Andrews know that her portrayal of Mary Poppins—particularly, descending the banister—helped me come out, and contributed to saving my life. If I could manifest in a Poppins chalk painting, I would cross over to another Disney film, wind up in _101 Dalmatians_ ' 1961 cell animation, and tell off Cruella De Vil.

*

The purple and blue anemone beneath the rocks at Arroyo Burro beach in Santa Barbara were easier to find when the tide was lowest. Full of holes, I called the Pacific smooth stones we collected there traveled sea worm ships. Uncle Jerry made me two sculptures out of two bigger stones, chiseling as we walked with Aunt Joan. The bird and goddess are on my mantle.

*

Someday, I hope to be a snail, even if I cannot sail with a gigantic pink one.

*

When I put the stones in my mouth as a kid, I think I learned something about the patterns and shapes of ephemerality and eternity, and I wanted to learn more. I recognized a sentience that connected everything in its webby cat's cradle. That belief gained prominence and my sense of immanence and multi-faith, no-faith possibilities overturned the Orthodox Jewish inculcation of God meaning transcendence, a vertical hierarchy, and possible afterlife.

Eventually, I believed both more and less in the God of my childhood and turned to other orientations, including secular humanism. Many people don't know or care to learn about what hylozoism, panpsychism, and panentheism mean. For good reasons, most folx I've met find these words prohibitive and exclusionary, however unintentional the terms' inaccessibility. Although pantheism and animism are perhaps not much better where inclusive language is concerned, they are generally easier to explain and understand, so I use these words as my respectful shorthand.

*

My truest spiritual orientation is serendipity. Big thanks to the small stone teachers.

***
GEORGE K. ILSLEY

ALL THE SECRETS

"Fierce is never enough." His sprawling mustache

puddles along his jaw, and he's wearing a dirty

white bra outside his T-shirt. "Quiet creeps

up in felt slippers and clobbers them."

He leans forward to whisper

hard-won wisdom. Hisses wetly

into a large hairy ear. "Discretion, you

see, is nine-tenths of possession."

He tugs at his pantyhose, stained and bagging

at the knees. Adjusts everything with quick loose

rolling jerks of the hips. Surveys the desperate

room. The crowd is thinning.

Gobs of mascara wave into view as he swoops.

"I have learned so much," he says, fluttering.

"All the secrets."

***
CONTRIBUTORS

**YUSUF YAHYA** (Cover Artist) was born in Washington, D.C. He is the only Deaf child in his hearing family. His parents are very musical: his father played the piano, and his mother was a jazz singer. They were playing in a band when, at the age of three, he began dancing. After graduating from the Model Secondary School for the Deaf (MSSD), he became a professional dancer for the Sankofa Dance Theater in Baltimore. He joined them on their national and world tours from 1992 to 2006. Also an artist, he is currently involved with the Guardian Dance Company. He is their only Deaf dancer. [facebook.com/silentoldboy]

*

M.J. (Michael Joseph) ARCANGELINI, born 1952 in western Pennsylvania, raised there and in Cleveland, Ohio, and has resided in northern California since 1979. He began writing poetry at 11. He has published in many little magazines, online journals, and over a dozen anthologies. He has four collections: _With Fingers at the Tips of My Words_ (Beautiful Dreamer Press, 2002), _Room Enough_ (NightBallet Press, 2016), _Waiting for the Wind to Rise_ (NightBallet Press, 2018), and _What the Night Keeps_ (Stubborn Mule Press, 2019). In 2018 Arcangelini was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

STUART BARNES was born and grew up in Hobart and lived in Melbourne for seventeen years before moving to Rockhampton, Australia. His first book, Glasshouses (UQP, 2016), won the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript, was commended for the Anne Elder Award for best first poetry collection and shortlisted for the Dame Mary Gilmore Award for best first poetry collection. From 2013-2017 he was poetry editor of _Tincture Journal_ ; in 2018 he guest-edited, with Quinn Eades, Cordite Poetry Review's TRANSQUEER issue. Recently his poetry has appeared in _POETRY, Rabbit: a journal of nonfiction poetry_ , and _Stilts_. Currently he's working on his second book, _Form & Function_. [stuartabarnes.wordpress.com Twitter: @StuartABarnes | Instagram: @StuartABarnes]

DUSTIN BROOKSHIRE is a Dolly Parton fanatic, poet, and curator of the Wild & Precious Life Series. He is the author of _To The One Who Raped Me_ (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). His poetry has earned him a Pushcart Prize nomination and has been published in _Subtle Tea, Ocho, Assaracus, RFD, Oranges & Sardines, Qarrtsiluni, Whiskey Island, Ourobors_, and other publications. He has been anthologized in _Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on their Muses_ (Lethe Press, 2012) and _The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South_ (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). [dustinbrookshire.com Instagram: @dustinbrookshire Instagram: @wildandpreciouslifeseries]

DON CELLINI is a poet and translator. He has published several books and chapbooks as well as translations of many poetry books from Spanish to English. He and his husband divide their time between Toledo, Ohio and Savannah, Georgia. [doncellini.com]

STEVEN CORDOVA's full-length poetry collection _Long Distance_ was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2010. His poems have appeared in _Barrow Street, Bellevue Literary Review, Callaloo, The Journal, Los Angeles Review_ , and _Northwest Review_. He reviews fiction and nonfiction for Lambda Literary. From San Antonio, TX, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

ALFRED CORN is the author of eleven books of poetry, the most recent titled _Unions_ and two novels; the second titled _Miranda's Book_. He has published three collections of essays, the most recent titled _Arks & Covenants_. He has received the Guggenheim, the NEA, an Award in Literature from the Academy of Arts and Letters, and one from the Academy of American Poets. He has been named a Life Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge. In October of 2016, Roads Taken, a celebration of the 40th anniversary of Alfred Corn's first book, was held at Poets' House in New York City. In November 2017 he was inducted into the Georgia Writers' Hall of Fame. Next year Norton will bring out his translation of Rilke's _Duino Elegies_.

THEODORE CORNWELL lives in New York and Minneapolis. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals, including _Glitterwolf, Southern Poetry Review_ , and _Folio: a Literary Journal_. He is the author of a chapbook _Gotham Gray_ (Finishing Line Press, 2017). His fiction has been included in a number of queer-themed anthologies.

BRENTON CROSS was born in Kingston, Jamaica and he moved to the United States at the age of twenty-one to pursue further academic studies. Brenton attended The University of Texas at Dallas and received a doctorate in humanities. The experience at UT Dallas forever changed his life, he took classes with Dr. Sean Cotter, Dr. Fred Turner, Dr. Michael Wilson and Dr. Rainer Schulte, all of whom had a tremendous influence in shaping his literary, hermeneutical framework for translating and reading literary and sacred texts. He currently teaches at Midland College, as an Assistant Professor of English, Humanities and Philosophy.

JOSEPH L. CUMER is a native of the Upper Midwest and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "These Things Happen" is his very first published work. A retired restaurant worker, he lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

DAVID CUMMER's poems have appeared in _RFD, Hineni_ , and _QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology_. His poem "Unexpectedly," which appeared in _Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman_ , was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He was also a finalist in North Dakota State University Press's 2020 Poetry of the Plains and Prairies Chapbook Competition. [facebook.com/huladavid]

DENISE DUHAMEL's most recent book of poetry is _Second Story_ (Pittsburgh, 2021). Her other titles include _Scald, Blowout, Ka-Ching!, Two and Two; Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems, The Star-Spangled Banner_ , and _Kinky_. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four collections, the most recent of which is _CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New)_ (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). And she and Julie Marie Wade co-authored _The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose_ (Noctuary Press, 2019). She is a Distinguished University Professor in the MFA program at Florida International University in Miami.

ARTHUR DURKEE is a poet, composer, visual artist, letterpress printer, and graphic designer. He has won multiple awards for music, writing, and photography. A Great Lakes native who has lived and roamed throughout the Midwestern, Great Plains, and Southwestern States, he does his best writing while on road trips, or camping in a tent far off the grid. His most recent poetry collections are _Scattered Leaves_ and _Green Man_ , both illustrated with the author's original linocuts. [patreon.com/ArthurDurkee, arthurdurkee.bandcamp.com, Instagram: @apdurkee, YouTube: apdurkee]

CHER FINVER is the author of several essays and the memoir _But You Look So Good and Other Lies_. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her husband, daughter, and three dogs.

STEPHANIE HEIT is a poet, dancer, and teacher of somatic writing and contemplative movement practices. She is a Zoeglossia Fellow, bipolar, and a member of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. Her poetry collection, _The Color She Gave Gravity_ (The Operating System, 2017), explores the seams of language, movement, and mental health difference. Her work most recently appeared in _Ecotone, Anomaly, Bombay Gin, Midwestern Gothic, Clade Song, Lime Hawk, Dunes Review, Typo_ , and _Disability Studies Quarterly_. She lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan where she creates Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space, with her wife and collaborator, Petra Kuppers. [stephanieheitpoetry.wordpress.com]

SCOTT HIGHTOWER is the author of four books of poetry in the US and two bilingual (English/Spanish) collections published in Madrid. He lives in Manhattan and teaches at New York University at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. [scotthightower.com]

WALTER HOLLAND, Ph.D., is the author of three books of poetry _Circuit_ (Chelsea Station Editions, 2010), _Transatlantic_ (Painted Leaf Press, 2001), _A Journal of the Plague Years: Poems 1979-1992_ (Magic City Press, 1992) as well as the novel _The March_ (Chelsea Station Editions, 2011). His short stories have been published in _A &U Magazine, Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly_, and _Rebel Yell_. Some of his poetry credits include _Antioch Review, A &U Magazine, Barrow Street, Chiron Review, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, Found Object, Pegasus_, and _Phoebe_. He lives in New York City. [walterhollandwriter.com]

GEORGE K. ILSLEY is the author of the memoir _The Home Stretch: A Father, a Son, and All the Things They Never Talk About_ as well as two previous books of fiction. His work has also appeared in _Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman_ , the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology _First Person Queer: Who We Are (So Far), EVENT, Prairie Fire_ , and _Geist_. Instagram: [@g.k.ilsley]

MIKE JAMES lives outside Nashville, Tennessee and has published widely. His many poetry collections include _Journeyman's Suitcase_ (Luchador), _Parades_ (Alien Buddha), _Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor_ (Blue Horse), _First-Hand Accounts from Made-Up Places_ (Stubborn Mule), _Crows in the Jukebox_ (Bottom Dog), _My Favorite Houseguest_ (FutureCycle), and _Peddler's Blues_ (Main Street Rag). He served as an associate editor of _The Kentucky Review_ and currently serves as an associate editor of _Unbroken_.

JEE LEONG KOH is the author of _Steep Tea_ (Carcanet), named a Best Book of the Year by UK's _Financial Times_ and a Finalist by Lambda Literary in the US. His latest book is _Connor & Seal: A Harlem Story in 47 Poems_ (Sibling Rivalry). Originally from Singapore, Jee lives in New York, where he heads the literary non-profit Singapore Unbound. [singaporeunbound.org]

PETRA KUPPERS is a disability culture activist, a community performance artist, a Professor at the University of Michigan and an advisor on Goddard College's MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts. She leads The Olimpias, an international performance research collective. Her academic books engage disability performance; medicine and contemporary arts; somatics and writing; and community performance. She is also the author of a dark fantasy collection, _Ice Bar_ (2018). Her most recent poetry collection is the ecosomatic _Gut Botany_ (2020). She lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she co-creates Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space, with her wife and collaborator, Stephanie Heit. [petrakuppersfiction.wordpress.com]

DENISE LETO is a multidisciplinary poet, writer, and dance dramaturge. She collaborated on the performance _Bluets #1-40_ at UC Santa Cruz. Her current collaboration is an ecopoetic exploration of the San Francisco Bay entitled "Baylands Poetry Project." Her work recently appeared in _About Place: Practices of Hope_. Denise is a member of Olimpias, an international disability performance and poetry collective. Fellowships/residencies include: Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Sicily Breadloaf Fellowship, and the Queer Sugarloaf Residency. She received the Orlando Poetry Price. Denise wrote the poetry for _Your Body is Not a Shark_ exploring feminist embodiment, dance, voice, and disability poetics. [onecontinuousword.wordpress.com Instagram: @sealeto Twitter: @sealeto]

SEAN J. MAHONEY has had work published in _Poets Reading the News, The Good Men Project, Nine Mile Literary Magazine_ , and _Wordgathering_ , among others. Sean lives in Santa Ana, California with Dianne, her mother, three dogs, and four renters. There is a large garden and two trees riddled with two-inch thorns and bitter oranges that look more lemon-like. He runs the Disability Literature Consortium booth at the annual AWP bookfair ... lit by crips. Sean was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis on 4.4.12.

RON MOHRING is a queer poet who started writing execrable rip-offs of Wordsworth at age 12. His writing has improved somewhat. He is the indefatigable force behind Seven Kitchens Press. [sevenkitchenspress.com]

CHAEL NEEDLE is the managing editor of _A &U: America's AIDS Magazine_, and, with Diane Goettel, he co-edited _Art & Understanding: Literature from the First Twenty Years of A&U_. His poetry has appeared in _The Adirondack Review, The Owen Wister Review_ , and _The Night Heron Barks_ , among other journals, and has been anthologized in _Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman_. His fiction has appeared in _Callisto, Chelsea Station_ , and _T.R.O.U._ , among other journals. His literary work was selected to be part of "ART + PRIDE" (2018; 2020), the Harvey Milk Photo Center's annual June exhibit. Instagram: [@ChaelNeedle]

ERIC THOMAS NORRIS's poems have appeared in, around, and at: _Impossible Archetype, SOFTBLOW, Assaracus, The Raintown Review, Ambit, E-Verse Radio_ , and many other fine journals. He lives in Portland, Oregon, USA.

WILLIAM REICHARD is a queer writer, editor, and educator. His sixth poetry collection, _The Night Horse: New and Selected Poems_ , was published by Bright Horse Books in 2018.

GREGG SHAPIRO is the author of seven books including the 2019 chapbooks _Sunshine State_ (NightBallet Press) and _More Poems About Buildings and Food_ (Souvenir Spoon Books). An entertainment journalist, whose interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBTQ+ and mainstream publications and websites, Shapiro lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with his husband Rick and their dog Coco.

ALLEN SMITH is a poet whose work has appeared in _Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman, My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them, Asheville Poetry Review, Broad River Review, Crucible_ , and his chapbook _Unfolding Maps_ , among other publications. He is a gay bilateral amputee (below the knee) who lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his husband.

VICTOR BARNUEVO VELASCO was born and raised in the Philippines and now lives in Miami Gardens, Florida. His prose appeared in Philippines Graphic; his poetry, Ani and Bicol Journal of Literature. An I.T. consultant, he had been writing primarily technical documents and project reports for the last twenty years. This year he went back to literary writing. His poetry will appear this year in _SOFTBLOW_ and _Impossible Archetype_. [facebook.com/victorvelasco]

PHILIP DEAN WALKER is a Class of 2000 graduate of Middlebury College (B.A., American Literature). He received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from American University in 2013. His first book _At Danceteria and Other Stories_ was cited by _Kirkus Reviews_ as a "Best Book of 2017," received a Kirkus Star in their review, and was a semi-finalist for the 2017 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. His collection, _Read by Strangers_ , was again cited by _Kirkus Reviews_ as a "Best Book of 2018" and also received the Kirkus Star in their review. Walker was a general contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference 2016. He lives in Washington, D.C. [philipdeanwalker.com Twitter: @philipdwalker Instagram: @flipp525]

MARK WARD is the author of the chapbooks _Circumference_ (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and _Carcass_ (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020) as well as a full-length collection _Nightlight_ (Salmon Poetry, 2022). He has been featured in _The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Boyne Berries, Skylight47, Assaracus, Tincture, Cordite, SOFTBLOW_ , and many more. He was Highly Commended in the 2019 Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award and in 2020 he was shortlisted for the Cúirt New Writing Prize and the Poetry Ireland Introductions series. His poem "Vegas Epithalamion" was recorded and broadcast for Irish National Broadcaster RTÉ's Radio 1 show, Arena. He is the founding editor of _Impossible Archetype_ , an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its fourth year. [astintinyourspotlight.wordpress.com]

JULENE TRIPP WEAVER is a psychotherapist and writer in Seattle. She has a chapbook and two full-size poetry books. _truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS_ was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and won the Bisexual Book Award. Her work is widely published in journals and anthologies; a few include _The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now, Mad Swirl, Stonewall Legacy Anthology_, and _Day Without Art Special 30 Year Edition_. [julenetrippweaver.com]

DIANE R. WIENER is the author of _The Golem Verses_ (Nine Mile Press, 2018). Her work appears or is forthcoming in _Nine Mile Literary Magazine, Wordgathering, Tammy, Queerly, The South Carolina Review, Stone Canoe, Ordinary Madness, Huffington Post, Welcome to the Resistance: Poetry as Protest_ , and elsewhere. Diane is Editor-in-Chief of _Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature_. After serving as Guest Editor for _Nine Mile Literary Magazine_ 's Fall 2019 Special Double Issue on Neurodivergent, Disability, Deaf, Mad, and Crip poetics, Diane became Nine Mile's Assistant Editor. [dianerwiener.com]

SCOTT WIGGERMAN is the author of three books of poetry ( _Leaf and Beak: Sonnets, Presence_ , and _Vegetables and Other Relationships_ ) and the editor of several volumes, including _Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry, Bearing the Mask_, and _Weaving the Terrain_. Poems have appeared recently in _Chiron Review, Unlost, Shot Glass Journal, Better than Starbucks, Gyroscope Review_ , and Ted Kooser's "American Life in Poetry" column as well as the queer anthology _Lovejets_. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with his husband, the writer David Meischen. [swig.tripod.com]

KATHI WOLFE's poetry has appeared in _The New York Times, Poetry_ , and other publications. _Love and Kumquats: New and Selected Poems_ (BrickHouse Books) is her most recent collection. She has received grants from PEN America and Vermont Studio Center. Wolfe is a contributor to the anthologies _QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology_ and _Beauty Is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability_. In 2008, she was a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writer Fellow. Wolfe is a columnist with _The Washington Blade_ , an LGBTQ paper.

*

RAYMOND LUCZAK (Editor) is the author and editor of 23 books, including _Flannelwood_ (Red Hen Press), _Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 200 Years of Walt Whitman_ (Squares & Rebels), and _Once Upon a Twin: Poems_ (Gallaudet University Press, February 2021). His work has appeared in _Poetry, Bellingham Review, Passages North, Impossible Archetype_ , and elsewhere. A ten-time Pushcart Prize nominee and an inaugural Zoeglossia Fellow, he lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. [raymondluczak.com Twitter: @deafwoof]

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