Three Loves
by Walter Holland
By the lamp he lay, all day nailing up boards
and tearing down the past, shirt off, rough
work gloves. Slick sweat, older than me,
a Vietnam Vet. He took me in, rented me
a bedroom, a sealed-off antebellum chimney
filled with bats. Every morning, Chris, I’d
watch the Blue Ridge Mountains through
the cold window, autumn hawks circling sky.
You lay there half drowsy in sleep, although
you knew I’d show up sooner or later. I know
you didn’t want love but knew the loneliness
of my body. How for years I’d recklessly
resisted that kind of sex for sex. But you’d hustled
out west, doing johns for pocket change. I left
you in August. And when the house
was finished, you’d found a young boy, a local kid
with blonde hair who’d share your fetish for antiques.
By winter you were dead from AIDS. Then Stan who worked
the late shift, slept all morning till noon—I met him
in a laundromat. Southern women pouring Tide,
idly reading magazines, but side by side we locked
eyes. I was struck by your face, the tight jeans, thighs;
the tee shirt slightly torn, the stubble on your face,
the lankiness in how you’d move, bend to take out
clothes. So quickly did I know that I’d ignite, hunger
take over. In your car I sat and moved my hand
into your underwear, your skin so pale and fine,
a boy’s hairless behind. We drove off to your
townhouse. I stayed all afternoon. Your body
I consumed, wrestled, bit, slapped and licked;
I lost myself inside the very thick of you. I lay there
heavy, drained of thought. I came to see you
every day. Pinned you down every night. Did things
I’d never done. Laughed at how crazed I was,
rough, and not myself. But then I knew I had to choose,
move away or stay, go back north and make a life,
or keep your ruddiness in my arms. This was why I failed
to ever give you back your keys. Did you die?
I never knew. No trace. Another person gone. And then
came Donnie staring at me with deer fawning eyes.
A flash of adoration. His anxiousness and nervousness
almost every time I came into the post office. A clerk
who day by day stamped mail, at night drank fine
wines, played records listening to jazz as he lit
candles about the room, old books beside his bed.
Sweet and stranded in the town. Lovelorn for a straight
boy, who came for dinner, hung around,
made jokes and lingered late. So Donnie clung to me
for something he could never have, every night drunk,
needing to express his emptiness, muttering till he fell asleep.
A good-old boy who’d sink into his sullenness
and lonely silence, unsteady, staggering and crying.
How I lost my way into this drama, lured in by sad
complexity, to rescue him from being so paralyzed
by someone so young, confused, and amused by
the power of passion, to be desired so deeply
and use it as control. I wanted him to tell me what
to do, to choose a life at home or suffer on alone, go
off to a city ruined by plague. Three loves. Three
thoughts of old want—touch, closeness, and death.
Pulse
(In Memoriam, Pulse nightclub massacre, June 12, 2016)
Violence is subsumed in more violence now
until violence becomes the leveling measure, a growing number
within a number, a stat within a larger stat, and we will focus
momentarily on coffins stacked in the ground or on open
coffins and lines of mourners among lines of mourners,
as mourning becomes our national pastime, a ritual through
repetition and we become better at it, better at sedating rage,
softening the blow with prayer, as prayer becomes the fullest
solution to loss and customary, fleet condolence. Small orange cones
mark the locations of shooters, the angles, the places where the shells
fell or the weapons dropped or the clips were emptied. Vectors
and trajectories have become our obsession, from what perspective
or point of view, how acute the angle, how acute the intent,
was the act pre-meditated? Factual detailing has become
an expensive military science, charted diagrams, iPhone videos, memes
or texts, sent in haste, the twitters of goodbye, jottings in blood on
loose leaf paper, recording and recording and recording until violence
becomes a pixel, a blur, a degree of lighting, a bathroom stall, a dark closet,
an opened window, a school desk overturned. But where are they now?
The dancers of night, their glittery outfits, their frozen drinks, pulse of movement,
jumps, hugs of silly laughter? Smell of cologne and whispers of timid friendship,
Black and Brown bodies and White, that paradise that feels right, queer and young
and wanting, moving with the fling of arms in close emotions uncontrolled.
In the violent violence we attempt to live, but over and over and over and over
we are told to forgive. Perished in the whirl of colors, the shine of mirrors
and bottles and foil; they wanted only the imaginary: a place to dance and love.
Gay New York
Now Cis, he, his, him, I live married, streaming opera or watching
on my iPad the archive at the Philharmonic. Reading Rimbaud and Jericho
Brown and listening to a podcast of queer emerging poets alone.
Looking at the shut city in the throes of change. Town of
long history, I must let you go. In your strange perversity, racist and
false. But let me let you know how I was drawn to your fey show,
your circle of privilege on-the-go and laughter for those who could
afford the fizziness and foppery, the preening and the diva-doting,
the top hats, the glam and glow. Kiss, kiss, but not tell. Ivy League dissemblers of
dissemblance, but that was how we got by, playing Jekyll, playing Hyde, on the brink
of suicide. Once I saw this city silver under glass. Once I danced all-night
and slept away the days. I dreamed I was O’Hara rushing off to lunch
passing down a midtown street, notebook in hand, savvy, cultured, smart—
dashing off to Penn Station to make another party date in the Hamptons;
or pick a young trick—misfit on a mission to smoke and down martinis
as I talked late into the night—young, “pretentious,” “promiscuous”—
but who cared! At night in Bryant Park in the seedy shadows, cruising in the men’s room
feeling up some business man dressed in pricey gabardine. Quelle langueur! to sit
in my silk robe and listen to records of Rubenstein and Lady Day while sipping
on espressos. But that was long-ago. White and silly and coked, I did not see,
the cruelty of inequity, the way I played and played at this glitter-glittery
hypocrisy, effete then elite to effete, complicit in the legacy of supremacy.
About the Author:
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 a novel, The March (Chelsea Station Editions, 2011). His short stories have been published in Art and Understanding, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, and Rebel Yell. Some of his poetry credits include: Antioch Review, Art and Understanding, Barrow Street, Chiron Review, Cimarron Review, The Cream City Review, Found Object, Pegasus, and Phoebe. He lives in New York City.
About All Accounts:
All Accounts and Mixture is an annual online feature celebrating the work of LGBTQIA+ writers and artists. For this series, we seek work from authors who self-identify as "queer," while acknowledging that this designation is subjective and highly personal. Our goal is to provide a forum for writers whose voices might be mis- or underrepresented by the literary mainstream. Submissions are open from June 1 to July 1. Poetry, prose, visual art, reviews and interviews will all be considered. Visit Submittable for more details.