Pride

In the picture, under the striped flag,
two young women with pink hair
wear plunge-neck crop tops over
golden bellies. One wears white so sheer
her nipples appear like those candies, Capezzoli
di Venere, nipples of Venus. I, too,
once bared my belly, even, in summers,
my breasts baked brown by Fire
Island sun where nakedness was prized
and the simple walk to grocery shop,
a meat market, everyone appraised.

That was another life of profligacy,
tight butt, reliable hips, the feast
of heat on hungry skin. Today,
my cane dangles from my wrist
a broken wing until I grasp it. Then—
like a creature from a myth—transformed
into an extra limb, conveys superpowers
like walking pain free from A to B.
It keeps me upright, stops falls
even the one that follows pride.

.

On Philandering

I’ve been thinking about the word philanderer
that we use to mean a notorious flirt and seducer
of women. Yet our roots and prefixes firmly fix
phil, love, to ander, man. I once learned a supposed
Greek saying: for practice a sheep, for pleasure a boy,
for children a woman. I don’t know if that’s true,
but men who love men are true philanderers.

At one time, men who loved men called themselves
homophiles, lovers of the same, and mattachine,
from the French for men who danced masked to poke fun
at society. Gertrude Stein gave us gay. Miss Fur and Miss
Skeene, were quite regularly gay. So carefree in their love,
were Miss Fur and Miss Skeene.
                More carefree than, say,
the Daughters of Bilitis, a fictional friend of Sappho,
who loved girls and lived on Lesbos, so, you know,
all who live on Lesbos are Lesbians, just not gay.

I’ve been thinking about philandering the way
the implicit man might meet the implicit woman,
in the same body. What love in that, complicit:
the mask of the true face dancing rapturously
saying fuck the rules, I’m so free, so gay.

.

Communion

This is my body,
which I’m giving to you.

   these twin scars on my right thigh,
   skin like melted glass, rivers of cooled lava.
   
   This new hip, that opens, lifts to wrap
   its leg around you. Take this gray
   sacral hair. Climb into, enter me with care.

This is my blood,
   freshly thinned
   by daily drugs,
   pumped through
   my chemically slowed heart,
   its palpitations nothing to do with you.

Take, eat, for this is my body, a feast for you.          

Take, drink of me, the scents
of well-worn places, elixir
of lived in, living on, longing.

.

Subhaga Crystal Bacon (she/they) is a Queer poet living in rural Washington on unceded Methow land. She is the author of four collections of poetry including Surrender of Water in Hidden Places, Red Flag Poetry, 2022, and the Isabella Gardner Award winning Transitory, forthcoming in the fall from BOA Editions.