Reuben Gelley Newman
POETRY BY REUBEN GELLEY NEWMAN
Music for a Queer Pastoral
after Jacques J. Rancourt
1.
You’re my age in the photograph, playing cello
on a beach in Minnesota, and I’m playing cello
in the poem, my landscape both Californian
& Adirondack, a patchwork of sand & forest,
ocean & peak. I open In the Time of PrEP,
read that there isn’t a queer pastoral for a reason,
but this is mine; I pull harmonics from sea foam,
I tender the trills of a white pine’s needles.
Hurl your green over us, writes H.D.,
cover us with your pools of fir, and I want
all of it, your melody whirling me
as I swim through a forest of boys.
2.
Near my grandparent’s house, there are fields of coastal sage scrub:
chollas, prickly pears, California buckwheat and sagebrush—
a shrub they call cowboy cologne. Riders would slip past and pick up
the scent on their clothes, a marker of the profession, and I can’t help
but imagine you in your hat with a sprig of the plant, watching
Ned Sublette sing “Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other”
or giggling with Steven Hall about Ernie Brooks’ handsome chest. It’s not
a pastoral if it’s a city story—you meet your partner in a telephone booth;
you frequent bars, saunter streets to the beat of Grandmaster Flash—but you
can tell a good tale: you name an album Corn, take promos in a cornfield;
you, Charles Arthur Russell II, son of the mayor of Oskaloosa, Iowa,
living your dream in New York City but never too far from home.
3.
My favorite song of yours is “Eli.” Eli’s a simple dog
who nobody likes, except for you, and you can’t get him
to be liked, and there can’t be more between you,
and the cello mourns in its human voice, its vocal chords
caught in double stops, its desire never satisfied, and neither
is mine, I play the song on repeat, the song on repeat, the song.
4.
In summer camp, a boy says he knows I’m gay, but I’m not out,
I flip him off; there’s no queer pastoral for a reason. As they search
for the headwaters of the Hudson, I stay on Colden Dam,
all wood, stone, and nail. My eyes reflect Avalanche Mountain,
mirrored in the water’s bloated face, and next morning the rain
sends piercing needles into the lake’s throat—no queer pastoral.
5.
For a reason, but can’t we make one, Arthur?
Let me ride up to Maine, to the island
where your family summered, where they scattered
your ashes. Let me lift a cello from its case,
sing “Eli” at the edge of the Atlantic.
Let mermen leave the sea to hear my song.