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The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 38. ...“Partial Luetic History of an Individual at Risk”...
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from “Partial Luetic History of an Individual at Risk”
In the Downtown Tombs of long ago
I learned how
to roll tobacco,
and eat stew with my fingers
like a Hindu,
and survive getting raped all day by murderers.
In return I earned an eternally positive sera,
and became a natural host, a host-plant
the drowned feed from,
a stand in the water my doctor flails
the seed-pods from –
with his polyclinic hands and seas of hair
I nearly disappear under,
how I sprout and flower
for my sky-blue and Mediterranean doctor. […]
Two decades later now I’ve got
stigmata,
I’m going holy […]
It’s grown unruly.
It’s exploding my bones.
Find me a spontaneous cure! the kind
that purifies the lives of saints
and drives the sun to leave its prints
in every leaf, and each brief bird,
and even in the marrows of the stones.
—J. M. Regan, [i]
circa 1987
[i] “from Partial Luetic History of an Individual at Risk” J. M. Regan Gay and Lesbian Poetry in our Time [Carl Morse and Joan Larkin, Editors] (New York 1988), ps. 327-328
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Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you.
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