Lodestar Quarterly

Lodestar Quarterly
Figure reaching for a star Issue 10 • Summer 2004 • Poetry

Bad Gay Poem

Yuri Hospodar

here we lay not a gym card between us
not a six-pack to be seen, but some empties nearby

I saw your dick before I heard your name
and knew what I wanted before I knew who you were

the only Masters I've heard mentioned were in the bar nearby
and I could never describe what's in one of those drinks

all I know of Fire Island is the dune buggies are deadly
and it's basically a high-priced sand bar and sound system

all I wonder when they play her records
is whether she has a last name on her license

you wonder how I listen to such awful noise
ask I put on something else as we take things off

you've been in one room and seen all my furniture
you've seen my social life when you met my cat

our only investments will be sheltered in latex
and portfolios limited to the look of what you've drawn

yet here we lay, laughing louder than the shades
in the labels of the shirts that would bounce my rent

no morning pretense of what's passed between us
and promised phone calls/e-mails might perhaps even be

as amid the bewilderment of our necessary ritual
something odd, genuine, makes a bare coy cameo

a misfit fit jigsaws briefly into place

Yuri Hospodar has lived in Boston, San Francisco, Prague, San Francisco, and these days Boston again, though winter and memory has San Francisco issuing a siren call. So, he's a bit indecisive. His first collection, To You in Your Closets, was published by Stone Soup Press in 1990. His work has appeared in New York Quarterly, Painted Bride, and online magazines such as Shampoo and can we have our ball back?. His work also appears in the anthologies Blood and Tears: Poems for Matthew Shepard and An Anthology of New (American) Poets.

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