Lodestar Quarterly

Lodestar Quarterly an online journal of the finest gay, lesbian, and queer literature a pencil drawing of a star by Editor-in-Chief Patrick Ryan

FEATURED WRITER

Issue 3 • Fall 2002
Photo of Michael Lassell
Photograph by Gavin Dillard

Michael Lassell

Michael Lassell was born in New York in 1947. After far too much education, he settled for a 15-year sojourn in Los Angeles in 1976, where he began a career in journalism and publishing most forms of the written and spoken word, including the award-winning books Poems for Lost and Un-lost Boys and Decade Dance. His work as an editor, including The Name of Love: Classic Gay Love Poems and The World In Us: Lesbian and Gay Poetry of the Next Wave, has made a significant and lasting contribution to our community. His poetry convinces us we're old friends who've let each other in on secrets. His next book project is a social history and architectural examination of Celebration, the Orlando town founded by Disney near its Florida theme parks, and he is meanwhile working on his next book of poems, tentatively titled Fingerprints and Battlefields.

Poems by Michael Lassell:
Boys in Foreign Climes, The Passing of an August Saturday, Death and 42nd Street, The Day George Harrison Died

FICTION

Alexander Chee

Alexander Chee
13 Crimes Against Love, or, the Crow's Confession

In two or three sentences it is already apparent that his prose has what writer Annie Dillard described as "the force of a dream and the heft of a life."

Tennessee Jones
The Men in my Family

Something comfortable plays out of these pages like the slow strum of a guitar -- a voice that sings loudly above its chaotic world.

Aaron Shurin
Three Scenes From the Sauna at the YMCA

A segment of the persistent revolving lure of saunas.

Matthew Clark Davison
Leaving

Evoked is the awesome fragility of family -- as is the remarkable strength a man can find to escape its shards.

Heather Mitchell
Choices

The amazing things that can unfold across a table capped with a bottle of opened wine.

DRAMA

Nicola Harwood

Nicola Harwood
Horse Latitudes

Two daughters discover that love rises from the same ground their mothers struggle to define.

SUBMIT

Unfortunately, Lodestar Quarterly is no longer accepting submissions. Thank you for your interest and good luck in placing your manuscripts elsewhere.

POETRY

Meliza Bañales

Meliza Bañales
Do the Math,
Ana, In Parts,
Flood

That girl with the sense of humor of a jackknife likes everything from Bukowski to indie rock and is convinced that no matta' what, it's all good in tha' hood.

Travis Montez
Over Me, Time Piece, Mixed Emotions

His sentences play tricks and raise us into the air a word at a time until we suddenly suppose we know our own place in the world he's just created.

Cris Hernandez
La 'Ruca Swings

One almost believes they're hearing from speakers in the very room we stand -- her voice is so perfectly and uniquely wrought.

Shauna Rogan
Dream of a Paperless Office

Every line brings something into question -- be it the universe or the simple existence of a lie.

Randall Mann
Fetish and Song

An unabashed concordance to 21st century queer-kind.

Sara S. Moore
Rollerball Revolutionary and how I survived the great mammal die-off of 2001

The coolest note of jazz to the crushing beauty of blues.

Michael Mastrofrancesco
Everlasting

These words indeed have the weight to tempt a soul back to earth.