steve-turtell
Steve Turtell is a poet who lives in New York City. His collection of poems, Heroes and Householders, was published in 2009 by Orchard House Press and will be reissued in May 2012 in an expanded second edition. His 2001 chapbook, Letter to Frank O’Hara is the 2010 winner of the Rebound Chapbook Prize given by Seven Kitchens Press and was reissued with an introduction by Joan Larkin in 2011. He is currently at work on At Work: Fifty Jobs in Fifty Years, and Peter Hujar: Invisible Master. You can follow him on Twitter as @rdturtle and friend him on facebook.
It had been raining for ten years—
just after our vows too, when the life
of the party shouted “Drop dead.”
What aplomb! All those faithless Springs
suddenly worthless. Years of abandonment
counting for nothing. Oh horrors of
enchantment, beauty of truculence.
You can always depend upon the hostility of lovers
But we, a glamorous, shuddering chorus,
eyes averted, move en pointe past
the confessional’s lurid glow,
that peep-show of self-pity. Really, Mary!
As if our holy yawns don’t prove
we’re simply riddled with purity
and will float softly, silently
as the dreams of the inconsolable rhinoceri,
pitiable as the tears of lost seagulls,
sure as Adam’s apple pie, straight to heaven.
The angels’ impatience says we’ve
all prayed for too little and they
can’t wait to scold us. God’s redecorating.
He wants all his darlings back.
Oh Frank. Have you missed us terribly,
whom you never met? I picture your daily
grand jeté over the sun, knowing the moon
never tires of loving you. I long to change
costumes and visit. Let’s see. Blandishments,
pitchforks, foreskins. Well! But then Edward
told me you had the longest he’d ever seen.
My mother loved me so I got to keep mine,
ensuring that there I would always be a goy.
Just knowing that I’ve kissed lips that once
kissed yours—but enough. Discretion is
the better part of careerism. Now there
is only one poet I love to read while dreaming.
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 12:20 PM UTC
We met over 40 years ago. Floating buttocky halves
spooned into pastel fruit bowls, even drowned in
Del Monte syrup, love at first taste. Your flesh
a luminous hue, hovering on the border of cream
and August skies; your flavor pure as dreamed pleasure
grazing my waking tongue, a melting sweetness
streaming down my throat; your name, a single syllable
promising delight: pear, barely sound, mere parting of lips,
and hint of breath, apple-green p, the sweetest
diphthong ea, all the air in the world, closed in rounded rr‘d
finality. A perfect word, reducing your rumpled, pinnacled
self, to one gorgeous, Old English syllable: per.
Right now, six of you sit ripening on my windowsill.
A sky-blue towel shields bottoms against further bruising
from the wood even at birth you instinctively flee, hanging
off trees in swelling green-gold tears, yearning for earth,
or growing to maturity in bottled, olive-green light, your dying
breath suffusing aging liqueurs like the oldest I ever drank,
the summer I was 19, a century-old brandy served in snifters
the likes of which this working-class boy had never seen.
I tilted the giant crystal bowl; the fragrant liquid elongated
in mimicry of its remembered self and seeped into my mouth: a pear’s
ghost enveloped in flame lay down to rest on my tongue. We both
were saved, at least for that night. Pear. Look of women I love
but don’t lust after, I want to conjugate you: I pear, you pear,
we pear. Like raspberries, Mozart and love, for me, sufficient proof
of God’s existence. I trust you. Lead me by the tongue to heaven.
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 12:19 PM UTC
When I was a child, I had a problem.
I knew, with the naked knowing of youth,
I was queer, and would be all my life.
I also knew not to tell anyone.
Who would want to hear this?
Silence said: “Be silent.
Your desperation’s your own.”
I kept quiet, as best I could,
and walked quietly out of childhood.
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 12:17 PM UTC
for Claire Daly
One day, you will be as naked as an animal.
Let that day come before you die.
The wolf will be your friend when you are no longer a wolf.
When you no longer flee from God, birds will no longer flee from you.
They will sit on your shoulder and listen to your song,
your soul’s steady hum.
The lion will welcome you into his pride and rest at your feet.
The peacock will be eager to stand with you.
When you no longer pose in furs and feathers, stealing
a glory that isn’t yours, all glory will be revealed.
When you leave this world the world comes back to you.
And the world will teach you how to love.
Let God pour in.
Then give it all back.
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 11:58 AM UTC