Subject: Submission: Three Poems
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 15:00:42 -0400

The attached three poems were submitted to New Lesbian and Gay Voice for
distribution.

The author, Robert Klein Engler lives in Chicago. He reads his work in
coffeehouses, bars, and cafes around the city.  His poems and stories appear
in Borderlands, Evergreen Chronicles, Hyphen, Christopher Street, The James
Wright Review, American Letters and Commentary, Literal Latte, and many other
magazines and journals. He is the author of two books of poetry, Shoreline
and Stations of the Heart (Alphabeta Press).  In 1989 he was the recipient of
an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award for his poem, "Flower Festival at
Genzano," which appeared in Whetstone.

Hal Gordon, who wrote the two previous submissions from New Lesbian and Gay
Voice on Oscar Wilde and Roger Casement, has another article available.  It
is a short piece on  City Lights Books -- a literary and gay landmark in San
Francisco -- which you may find intriguing.   Mr. Gordon is also working on
an article about Britain's possibly gay Prince Eddie -- No!  Not that one,
but his great uncle, the grandson of Queen Victoria, who was suspected of
being Jack the Ripper.

None of these items have been previously published, and the authors would
appreciate your customary payment for such works.

If you would like to receive either of the Gordon items, please contact New
Lesbian and Gay Voice at the return address for this message.   Please
identify the publication which will receive the item.

We would also appreciate receiving information as to when one or more of
these items are published.

In Another Time, This Work Would Have Been 
Quickly Destroyed By the Authorities

After he died, I had a chance to enter the room where 
he wrote the poems - there were stacks of paper, porcelain, 
nude photos, and a plant bent thirsty by the armchair, 
waiting, with the patience of plants, for a movable rain.

He devised a plan in which the beauty of young men
would be used to decorate his nights instead of their years
wasted in war, he had a way whereby wisdom was exchanged
for the touch hands, like sunlight exchanged for tears.

He wrote in parables about a sixties little surfer boy,
and weeping and the gnashing of teeth, he kept a lookout 
for the slightest telltale gesture. But what did he enjoy,  
the same dull march of time, the same wrestling with doubt?

Sitting there, before the tribunal, with their blank, polar
bear expressions, he muttered something about the Lord
coming with a host of angles at the end of time, and of the boys
who knew he was hungry, so he spoke not to them of food.

Reading his books, I realize there once was a place aslant
with what he desired, then, it too fell into the dry cuss
of days, the same dry mouth that devours us all. Poor plant. 
Patience could not open the sky for you. Praise the cactus.

Our Pathetic Lives as Viewed By Those Who Ski White Powder

We could be grandfathers, if it weren't for the hole in our hearts,
if it weren't for the fact we are what we are, the same way clouds
of steam rise white and billowy into the cold blue of sub-zero
northern days, days where dry hands snag against sheets.

They make their plans and tell us nothing of it.  We dream, and
learn diseases of the scrotum display themselves by symptoms 
in the ear: we wanted a father and he never came, we wanted a teacher
and he never came, we wanted a lover, an editor, and they never came.

Like so many, we belong to the community of the broken, even if
they don't want us, that's where we belong, so we take up our crosses
and follow, follow a forest of crosses, enough wood for an arc,
the dust of our following rising to heaven like holocaust smoke.

I bet you see us from the mountain, memories of her teen beauty
behind your eyes, exhaling breath, like steam from the hot tub,
into the dry cold of Colorado - see, there, far off in the distance,
it looks like insects on the move - what the hell, you shove off.

All the Reports so far Mention None of This

Seeing how things go, this could be my last spring.
Perhaps I should spend it basking under the light of blue
windows, or feeding my soul on the green of new leaves,
and grass, or pale eyes like monumental verdigris.

I open the blinds just enough so that sunlight stripes
the wall.  Here is a photo of him, one of the few things
I've hauled from pillar to post, kept with me from all
the places I've moved since college, since my awakening.

How is it the past takes hold like jaws and does not let go?
Now, even if he comes here with the gift of his body,
would I take it - what does it mean, the air of the world
compressed to a hand full of seeds or some dry salute?

So let it be spring.  I open to what seems a rare season, 
a moment like the pause just before a drop of dew falls.
That name teeters on my lips. Should I say it, or let it fall
away too, and simply breathe the royal sigh of lilacs. 

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 1 Oct 1995 23:31:26 -0400
Subject: Submission:  More Poems

By inadvertence, the following poems were omitted from the submissions made
to your publication earlier.  

The Pleasure Promised by that Recruitment 
Must Be Very Great Indeed

The poet Auden once remarked he knew he was going 
to die when he looked into the street and saw everyone 
younger than he was.  Nowadays, just go into the Gap.  

Of course, what Auden meant was how dare the young 
have a chance we didn't have!  David, who sells me socks, 
is so beautiful, I almost forget my size. Cash or credit? 

American Express, I say, hoping he will get the hint
I have a rich interior life, but then realize he wouldn't be 
working here if he wasn't already claimed by other eyes.  

May I come in here naked, I think, I need your hands 
to fit me out.  Instead, I leave, while he turns to arrange 
T shirts on the table, one on top of another, like lovers.  

Across the street, at the Terra Museum, I look at 
paintings by Buttersworth - tall ships of wood and rope 
crash into a sea of green glass.  Triangles of cotton 

sails cut through the sky.  On deck, the young men 
are dots of blue, strokes of gray. Art or therapy? 
Still, they glide away with bales of bright days.

A Cartographer Wonders About the New World

Nowhere on my map of love is there a place
That I could go, an island with long vistas where
I lounge and watch the sea and sky, pretend the race
Of partners won, and breathe the floral air.

Where may I see the honey moon drift above broad palms,
And have a mate, and yet not be annoyed or troubled
By another's heat when the soft, secular psalms
Of pleasure are played, and then so doubled?

Nowhere on the grafts of time is there a chance
to coordinate desire with blood and bone.
While natives of the other world gather for the dance,
On the edge of wedding maps, our eyes look out alone.

Beyond the strand of words the old interpreters reside:
Father, eagle; mother, mouth; waiting girl, boy.
The shells wash up, then drift away below the tide.
My dear, it's done, so write the flesh is just a toy.

In the Same Room with Beauty

The overhead fans mill their portions of smoky air.
Paintings hang like ash on the edge of glaciers.

You are reading in the corner - 
asleep and yet awake.

Once, when you turn to look at a noise in the street,
I feel the lance of your eyes wind by.

At Last

Zinnias and yellow mums, saw grass bending to the hum of wind; the park is
tending to autumn now.  Great buildings of the city rest stone on stone. The
blank plaza turns light back to the sky. I want to tell about what is
missing, but who walks over to listen?  Near by, a girl puts down her book
and looks up at something invisible visiting for a while; a memory of air, a
memory of light, childhood pumpkins by a gray door, the old colonists rooted
in place, their security cloaked and drawn inward.  Where has all this gone,
high sides of red steel? What is the word for her transport:  regret, repeat,
release? Slide the screens from our eyes, let the trees scatter their tan and
ruby tatters, It is only reading now that matters.  Let traffic turn to its
destiny and the old fountain spill its silver tears into a muddy basin.  Let
the pigeons flutter above.  What a relief it is not to love.