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The Great Mirror of Same-Sex Love - Poetry - 46. ...Comic Book Heroes III...
.
Comic Book Heroes III
Raúl
was one of those boys
who by their way of looking at you
ask you
to kiss them;
to touch them all over.
He was
one of those boys
who
after some time has gone by
only the name
sticks with you:
Raúl.
+
He was always a little odd,
very quiet and reserved;
he looked me in the eyes
and called me his friend.
Kind of sad at times,
at times happy telling
his dirty jokes. […]
+
When he started
going steady I told him
how pretty she was
but
I always looked at him.
+
I went to the wedding,
saw him cut the cake
and dance the wedding waltz,
happy with his wife.
But at times I caught him
gazing at me
from across the room,
remembering my arms
and the way they held him.
+
“Did you lock the door?”
he asked,
and that was all he said.
+
He really couldn’t care less,
I mean,
if it was left up to him
we could do
whatever
we damned well pleased,
since after all, really,
it was a question
of personal taste.
But the law is the law
the cop said
as I zipped up my pants
and my friend
fumbled for a bill,
one of those big ones.
+
We found him dead
that morning,
a little bottle empty beside him
and a letter
addressed to Pedro.
For us,
his family
all the silence
and uncertainty of not knowing
who Pedro might be –
the Pedro
to whom in his letter,
which we opened
in a moment of desperation,
he said simply:
“I love you.”
+
Now
that I’m
hopelessly
in love
I recall
the first time
we saw each other,
how I struck up with him
what might be called
a conversation
and a few minutes later,
we fucked
on the carpet at his house,
so soon
after meeting
on a bus
on the Valle-Coyoacan line.
+
Good wishes
to you,
imagining you
handsome and strong,
now
that my lover
the friend I love so much
is far away from me,
now that he’ll be coming home
tonight
a little tired,
loving me even more,
telling me
with or without words
about the meeting
between you,
going to sleep
on my shoulder
before his usual bedtime.
—Ernesto Bañuelos Enríquez,[i]
1978
[i] “Comic Book Heroes III” Ernesto Bañuelos Enríquez, from “The Story of Myself and Some Friends in These Fragments of Daily Loves” reprinted in Now the Volcano: An Anthology of Latin American Gay Literature [Winston Leyland, Editor] (San Francisco 1979), ps. 71-75
https://archive.org/details/nowvolcanoanthol00leylrich/page/70/mode/2up
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