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Limitations
or
The Strangeness Behind a Smile

James B. Nicola

Since I was born a man I never can
write a Lesbian love poem, nor use
the c word other than in derogation
or being misconstrued as meaning it
that way by at least 52%
of you. So I do not use the c word
at all, nor write Lesbian poetry;

Since I was born not white but tawny peach
or apricot, freckled, with auburn hair,
of European descent and in America,
I cannot fashion verse of revolution
and oppression other than as an in-
tellectual exercise, or at least
as one where at least 52%
of you would deem it disingenuous.
Should I enlist the lexicon of The
Downtrodden, like the n word, the k word,
and other desultory derogations,
I’d be construed, or misconstrued, as one
            of The Oppressors.

    But I can cry, my friend, and can
imagine myself in any and all
of thirty billion shoes, or sandals or
bare feet, and be moved by the loving lines
of Sappho, and inspired; or shaken
into uncontrollable wretchedness when I hear
the news of the new souls that have been
eradicated by the ethnic mower’s blade,
choked to breathless deaths by rings of finests,
and all the etceteras innumerable—

and do what I can, which is at least this,
to passersby of every hue and age
and size and gender and etcetera:

to nod and smile—a small smile, not much nod,
but an affirming second to relate
that for the second we can glance as one,
which means that even when the glance is gone,
we have been more than two, but two among
the thirty billion who have ever been,
and for a moment in one space and time,
consummated the potential of all pairs
not erotically, emotionally or even
intellectually, but somewhere,
some dissolute or woebegotten god
who knew no better than to stay away
and silent, saw fit that the bond between
be drawn if only sketched in a god’s mind’s eye,
a brief reminder of the 30 billion
more bonds to take up near-as-many lifetimes.

I cannot be you, but am one with you
as long as we keep looking at each other.

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