Читать книгу Love and Other Poems - Alex Dimitrov - Страница 13

WAITING AT STONEWALL

It’s a Friday in New York

and fifty years from ’69.

Though since we’ve yet to meet

or have, and are still looking,

what we’ve said to each other

in photos and films, bars

and basements, returns

with enough echo

to remind us of ourselves.

Those of us who resisted heroes

and sentiment. Those of us

who waited and found neither—

not the promised liberation

in marriage, or the salvation

of laws. How some asked

to carry America’s guns

and did. How others knew

equality was a rumor,

elusive as freedom or sex.

Do you think about dying

every time you have sex?

I still think about dying.

I do think about death.

Or a day in childhood when I saw

the only place I could live

was here. Inside.

So whoever wanted me

had to come through the body.

Which has rarely been beautiful

to me. Too soft and unconvincing.

Too small. I hope the future

is free of god and memory.

I hope the future is

all body, all blood.

And since to be queer

is a way to forgive life,

I’ll take as long as I want

finishing my cigarette on Seventh,

walking up Christopher

and thinking of everyone

who’s yet to get here—

somewhere in a bedroom maybe,

young and bored across

the country, not impressed

by our parades or idols,

all the sponsorship we bought.

I’m late for a drink but wander,

handsome and aimless,

looking for a sign

before nodding to the dead

who always need a light.