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kevin, come back
Nov. 5th, 2022 08:57 am kevin, come back is the title of the poem jacob read last night, celebrating the release of his new book, alongside jean's new book, two generations and forty years between them. it starts:
"the creamiest sun rises and sets over
San Francisco, the city can see out
my bedroom window, scattered w/ undies
and socks
and the pink jacket that's
good to wear on the windy edge of a lake
on Mission and 3rd
that's good to wear to meet you in front of the museum
to go get naked at a dead poet's grave."
i miss kevin too, dead now for 3 years and older than so many of his friends lost during the AIDS crisis. jacob was part of his Tagged project, which was a shy excuse to get beautiful young men to let him take photos of them semi-naked. jean and the rest of the older poets in attendance at this reading were part of another set in the 70s, straighter, more puritanically political, they're all alive in the same Berkeley enclave and talk, work together even fifty years later; still friends after years of personal and aesthetic conflict. death barely touched them. but i told jean about the nyu adjunct contract. looking at an old photo of her, we lamented together the return of denim flares but not of tight leather vests. her book a young recruit is important to me. this line "interiority coaches a wry person / everyone's out of the house, walking or whatever." the sense of being conscripted as a young person and partially ventriloquiloquized by a poetic cadre. jean has started carving spoons with a lathe in her garage.
i miss kevin's lack of cluster or lineage, the way he spared no one from the indiscriminate shine of his desire, its dangerously edged sun. something tattered about his social neediness, manifest into power. the way he held court at the bookstore, the theater, the movies, outside the CVS with a bottle of Tab. that line in brian's eulogy poem for him—it's about them visiting jack spicer's grave together and kevin says something akin to 'are we flirting/do you think i'm cute' and brian is like 'maybe or maybe you were just on my undergraduate english syllabus' and kevin loves it, of course, its like the perfect shade/compliment response to kevin's whole queeny shade/compliment deal. so perfectly the kind of not-entirely-affirmative-but-affirming queer genealogy. what is it to have elders? what is it to be an elder? this is a question i ask myself often.
"the creamiest sun rises and sets over
San Francisco, the city can see out
my bedroom window, scattered w/ undies
and socks
and the pink jacket that's
good to wear on the windy edge of a lake
on Mission and 3rd
that's good to wear to meet you in front of the museum
to go get naked at a dead poet's grave."
i miss kevin too, dead now for 3 years and older than so many of his friends lost during the AIDS crisis. jacob was part of his Tagged project, which was a shy excuse to get beautiful young men to let him take photos of them semi-naked. jean and the rest of the older poets in attendance at this reading were part of another set in the 70s, straighter, more puritanically political, they're all alive in the same Berkeley enclave and talk, work together even fifty years later; still friends after years of personal and aesthetic conflict. death barely touched them. but i told jean about the nyu adjunct contract. looking at an old photo of her, we lamented together the return of denim flares but not of tight leather vests. her book a young recruit is important to me. this line "interiority coaches a wry person / everyone's out of the house, walking or whatever." the sense of being conscripted as a young person and partially ventriloquiloquized by a poetic cadre. jean has started carving spoons with a lathe in her garage.
i miss kevin's lack of cluster or lineage, the way he spared no one from the indiscriminate shine of his desire, its dangerously edged sun. something tattered about his social neediness, manifest into power. the way he held court at the bookstore, the theater, the movies, outside the CVS with a bottle of Tab. that line in brian's eulogy poem for him—it's about them visiting jack spicer's grave together and kevin says something akin to 'are we flirting/do you think i'm cute' and brian is like 'maybe or maybe you were just on my undergraduate english syllabus' and kevin loves it, of course, its like the perfect shade/compliment response to kevin's whole queeny shade/compliment deal. so perfectly the kind of not-entirely-affirmative-but-affirming queer genealogy. what is it to have elders? what is it to be an elder? this is a question i ask myself often.
