He Was Gay, Gary Cooper? – poems by Jendi Reiter

He Was Gay, Gary Cooper?

for Vito Spatafore

Don’t cry to them when your chair breaks under you.
You’re no one’s dumpling wife,
no cashmere man will clip your dishonor
like the joke plastic
surgeon unblemishing that truckload ass.
Your secret sugar
men are silent when they come
to the rattling underpass
or parked car where a pistol
surprises their heads into gravy
quick as a wet dream.

In the old days your captain
spits about, they did the job without expression
like you rolling
your tongue around the guard’s piece, like you
belly-rocking on the carpet
under your crew’s laughter,
swivel-chair wheels on your back.
Abused cowboys
and dead conquistadors shut their mouths
around the pedestal
where lesser men cat-fight over history.

Was that stupid beautiful son
of a boss silent too, when you plugged him
in the hole that pride left?
He bloodied the cards,
busting to force himself royal,
but if he’d spared you
one ecstasy glance you might have told him
jokers play longer.

Aprile Is the Cruelest Month

for Janice Soprano

He’s joined the Witness Protection Program.

He’s got a thinner face, a new bride who picks
the threads from his suit
patiently in the dark.

He’s smiling all the time now,
no more tight furious line
of his kisser to hide those pearls.

Remember the sweaty peace of reuniting
at yoga, sprung
from the jail of short-term enlightenment:

he’s practicing savasana so hard
he could forget how to stand up
at the altar.

Has he begun to sprout
lilacs in the new dump
his underground wife calls home?

His last meal with me stays in his heart.
He said, Janice,
Janice, hold on.

And down he went.

Jendi Reiter is the author of five poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Made Man (Little Red Tree, 2022); the novel Two Natures (Saddle Road Press, 2016), which won the Rainbow Award for Best Contemporary Gay Fiction; and the story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press, 2018). They are the editor of the writing resource site WinningWriters.com. Find them on Twitter @JendiReiter, and visit their blog at JendiReiter.com

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