love's songs for a queer nation
Edward Mycue
Get washed you blind handsome city.
Your skies plum-colored, your boats
carless bob in the marmalade waves.
That harbor with a stone in its mouth.
Winds tear, disarrange clouds; rain
sings at noon in a pacific grove, its
rainbow seeming both truth and art; a
wingless buzzing rises in grey fusion.
Spring winds sing a holocaust song, red
(rue, redwood, red root, rust, red rage)
Ğred like hope-ruby of working-class
love songs for a queer nation; yellow
roses for so many dying becoming blue
as slowly the wingless rises, oyster-
hued like old linoleum (littered, torn).
At night, your strange heart is music
learned in love the moonmilk of silence.
San Francisco, where are your rites?
At your feet like deep-pile garnet rug
are your children: broken bisque porcelain.
I write my autograph on your red blood cells.
Once calf-white, your promise is memory-
tongued, eggshell-thin, a doomed diadem; and
our love for healing is desperate geography.
