Torquere (E-Journal - York University)

Shogan, Debra

Davidson, Judy

English

Parody of the Gay Games: Gender Performativity in Sport

Lyncaro, Aidan

New York '98 
AIDAN L YNCARO 
I Aidan Lyncaro is a pseudonym for a Canadian Ph.D. candidate specializing in Slavics. Aidan has previously published in the United States and with the web ezine 'Word Salad.' Aiden commutes to work on a 198, mint condition, Honda Rebel, 250. 
I am a piloteer techno explorer 
palm pilot subway map in hand 
·old enough to remember orienteering with map and compass 
internal navigational sense without global positioning satellites 
but progressive and wise to embrace technology 
distance bridged by satellites and land microwave towers 
you at Mont Tremblant Quebec 
me in a car coasting past the chemical farms 
of Elizabeth New Jersey 
more storage tanks 
than jersey cows in the Garden State 
our long conversation on the mobile lingers 
suspended in the haze 
each word a breathless syllable 
George Washington bridge shines like a jewel 
in the misty morning light 
rich York poor York 
New York of contradictions 
Pier 76 on the Hudson wears the faded name United States Line 
in 1956 we disembarked the fastest ocean liner 
SS United States majestic proud ambassador of hope 
torquere: Journal of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Studies Association I 
Revue de Ia Societe canadienne des etudes lesbiennes et gaies 
Vol. 3 (2001) © CLGSA I SCELG 
immigrant dreams in my father's pocket 
burning a hole with ambition 
an American! he was going to be an American! 
sweet land of liberty 
of thee he sang 
as the trunks revealed their meager cargo 
mother's china all the way to New York 
from France to America 
from war's end and poverty to promise 
promise and dreams 
and the mobile conversation 
dangles in the air 
me here you there 
everywhere 
in poor York rich York 
New York of contradictions 
New York '98 I 121 
two newly minted jacksons and an honest abe or two 
buy bvlgari at Saks 
the animated shop window dressing is free 
for passers-by patient enough to wait 
one by one 
homeless with their possessions, plastic bags not from Saks 
praying in the nave of Saint Patrick's 
for redemption and the next meal 
I light a candle and pray 
a Vivaldi summer 
brought promise and transition 
from the imagined to the real 
the prayer floats on angel wings 
within St. Patrick's walls 
lifting my intention to the universe in a trance 
a portal fitting of New York 
reflecting in Cologne like a digital image 
clean streets 
once mean streets 
122 I Lyncaro 
scented by the smoke of oversized pretzels grilling on coals 
bagels large as transport truck tires 
in the child's recollection cuisine 
Times Square incandescent glow gone 
light bulbs replaced 
hi-tech computerized razzle 
past the neon dazzle 
getting ready for 99 
arrogant cabs armored grills 
no fear 
heart stopping maneuvers 
my car left to jockey 
through traffic-choked Broadway and the Avenue of the Americas 
heart pounding 
beneath the surface 
safe within 
the subterranean efficiency worming through tunnels 
a buck fifty to ride transfer and arrive 
without the need for cardio pulmonary resuscitation 
subway tokens with their pentagonal centers 
brass life savers jingle in my pocket 
in time to the tintinnabulation of 
rockefeller bells 
Rockefeller wire angels all in white 
ignore the December twenty-ninth rain 
trumpet gabriels herald 
peace on earth goodwill 
just around the comer from Saks Fifth Avenue 
where homeless street angels huddle on the subway grate 
in the ozone-tinged rising heat 
Grand Central Terminal 
constellations trigger memories 
of a Ferlinghetti Coney Island of the Mind 
'when Christ climbed down from His bare Tree 
and ran away to where 
there were no rootless Christmas trees 
hung with candy canes and breakable stars' 
loose change on the streets 
subway stairs 
copper pennies 
embedded in the hot summer asphalt 
pave Broadway and 42nd 
New York '98/ 123 
enough in the collection for one subway ride to Whitehall 
the bullish market wall 
two pebbles disappear into my pocket 
as a souvenir of the rock foundation 
heart and soul create 
George Washington bridge shines 
like a jewel in the misty night 
rich York poor York 
New York of contradictions 


New York '98

Salah, Trish

Ferial Mirage (Fata Morgana) 
TRISH SALAH 
S he awoke to an appetite for narrative. Wanted to know who was a memory machine. Who was a memory. She was in a bed and she was entwined and twinned with, and she was 
nearly thought (the moon) she was nearing the moon. Two in a bed 
and the Witch, was it? Under the moon, heavy breasted, and plunged 
into it. It was only scary. What recursive thought isn't? She awoke 
to the moon, full and flaccid, stinking of drunken sex, sweet with it, 
like a child. 
The romance is always two in bed and in another room, another. 
Some fey thing you thought you cast off, full. Under the moon, your 
familiar, you ' re twinned with her, cursive and strung out. Halfway 
across the city, or, its architecture. Your restlessness at six a.m., an 
appetite for water or memory, the sweat of it. You have the feeling 
of a wolf. Feral idylls, ferrous. The taste of lightning in your mouth. 
A moony child, switched in the night. 
Two in a bed and through the window a gray line where dawn will 
come. It allows silhouette: trees, clouds, horizon. Her eyes on her 
lover rapt, knotted in Celtic shadow: silhouette. Who she was 
wakened to, her appetite? The feeling of a wolf or a child behind 
the door you locked. Or, eagles wrapped around my neck, at the 
collarbone, martial. Love with its histories of war and open to the 
band of light, a little hopeful music, at the horizon, the willingness 
of light, its capacity to diffuse, to allow others, palest blue, a yellow 
awning of dawn. 
A witch, sucking her tit, beautiful as her familiar, and the precise 
articulation, the immediacy of tree branch silhouetted, black veins 
with an upward reach. (Old bones sucked, at the root.) Love against 
101·quere: Journal of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Studies Association I 
Revue de Ia Societe canadienne des etudes lesbiennes et gaies 
Vol. 4-5 (2002-2003) © CLGSA I SCELG 
Ferial Mirage (Fata Morgana) I 171 
the dawn, sienna dissolving slate. Here with the bones of trees we're 
still in night, but the mist's uneven line speaks of how day may come 
through trees; they ' re horizon. It's a winter night anxious for day. 
Two in a bed are debating with dreams, which to allow. Which to 
wake to? Children under foot, whitening. Resentful? Too long with 
a pillow over her head. 
Smothering is something you can 't argue with bones. The past is 
the past and children should not die under foot, in the pretty jaws of 
a witch. Outside the sky is plunging trees. Clouds enjoy her sleeping 
smile. She is mindful of snow on the tracks, widening distance, a 
capacity for depth. With colors coming as inevitably as old lovers 
do, or not, when you are in danger, or asleep. Out another window, 
the city sky line feeling its own: blue thinning of darkness. Split root, 
your old man love is walking the rounds. The chill air is working its 
way every where like smoke into sky. Where diffused, every dawning 
is refused. A fey tum to the south. Like memory, like children. Its 
matter made from radiance, and your concern for freedom. 
Where her freedom was concerned, the witch had her aversion to 
trains, trials, of thought that might ask of her uncertain lightness. 
She got out of bed, distracted with her moon and an appetite for 
water. Memory flood the dawn with others. Dawns she had cast off, 
not unkindly, but with an instinct for survival, and now? It was all 
comparative and her love enjoyed her sleeping smile. Her teeth hurt. 
The city was lightening in the west and still she felt refusal from the 
moon. Full, and indifferent, the cut on her thumb from dinner the 
night before. Acid with having you, and unable to sleep. She was 
pulled a cloud's distance. (Once, there were others: old man law, 
that bad dad, and even courtly romance). She was aware of the 
necessity of certain fictions, more certainly of their failing. Often, 
she flattered herself, she was above all that. There were gulls in the 
widening distance and as a lover, as someone with some measure of 
dignity, of freedom . What galls at early dawn, pulling, as she wakes 
to snow, a little hung over, and dishes to be washed. Never the less 
she prized her freedom. Like a thief in the night. Love demands that, 
and one needs to be able to work, and then, or ullfil, the backward 
glance. A certain distance (a collect call from Messina, or Tennessee). 
172 I Salah 
Fiction will do that for you. More, if you are a beautiful girl, as she 
was, and determined to be. 
I swept over you before I came downstairs, and said sorry, not for 
leaving but for the before. My restlessness in bed and your sleep 
interrupted by the moon, which was being insistent with me. A fey 
child, locked outside and scratching, leaving a certain sickness in 
my mouth. One tries to be fair. 
Last night, putting on my beautiful girl face, and playing with my 
hair, you are sweet to me. I need some water. I meant to say: she 
woke with a blood on the narrative, a fairy bias. Or was it mechanic? 
The taste of it, ferrous in her mouth, and the feeding of the dawn on 
night, nearby. How do you sleep through that? Luminous and 
plundering sleep, whole breaks of color, ask the impassibility of light. 
Where gold comes through palest, crimson tendrils, mauve surrounds, 
and palest, gold comes through. The sky and last night's party, all 
those politicians, all that red wine. It was only the nightmare of the 
last time that kept us in fiction. A certain distance. Overcome. We 
play it. For one moment, one of us, anyhow. The sun came up. Time 
to wash. 
She awoke to an amber flush, gaudily more so. A less offensive word 
for Marrano, as if that could take the sting out. Deeper ocher, deeper 
maroon. The winds were at her and what they carried. Eagles' 
silhouette intruding with a sharpened edge, and her perception pierced 
with it. 


Ferial Mirage (Fata Morgana)

Bidwell, Charles M.

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus I 225 
Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell. Just Married: Gay Marriage and 
the Expansion of Human Rights. Doubleday Canada, 2002. 288pp. 
$34.95 (Cdn). ISBN 0385658958. 
REv. CHARLES M. BIDWELL (University of Alberta) 
C an you imagine a wedding with police protection? Kevin and Joe experienced that and plenty more. They tell us everything in this topical book. It is a combination of a 
documentary of recent events in Toronto, which have implications 
for the rest of us in Canada, and an autobiography of this gay couple 
that is deeply involved in a very public, media-intense marriage. It 
recounts the drama from the Reverend Brent Hawkes's inspiration 
to challenge the inequality of marriage as being the exclusive 
privilege of heterosexual couples, through the experiences of the two 
couples involved in this challenge, to the subsequent political and 
legal consequences. It also provides an overview of the legislation 
prior to this challenge and of the struggles and achievements 
regarding equality in the courts - in spite of the conservative 
Christians using religion as a political and social weapon against 
people who do not share their beliefs. 
Of course, there is no solid agreement in the ' gay community ' 
that we should marry, and marriage currently has a miserable 
performance record. But the key issue is that we have equal 
recognition with mixed-sex contracts and with that the choice to 
marry or not. Kevin and Joe take turns in this book to document the 
chronology of events that led to their decision to participate in the 
historical act of announcing the banns - a first fo"r Canada and the 
Americas- and its subsequent effect on their personal and profession-
al lives. Laced with quotes from the media of the day, thi s document-
ary is enlivened with their personal accounts and reflections. Aptly 
titled, Just Married: Gay Marriage and the Expansion of Human 
Rights is part autobiography 'and part current history and contempor-
ary social commentary. It is a first-hand view of a courageous couple 
and their experience of coming out of the security of anonymity and 
facing the glaring exposure of the media. It is also a gripping tale of 
how they faced the religious conservatives who sense that granting 
equality creates a threat to heterosexual coupling. As an ordained 
clergy in the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), I was pleased 
226 I Bidwell 
to see true Christian grace in action as they and the Reverend Hawkes 
engaged their opposition with "soul force" techniques of nonviolent 
resistance (see <www.soulforce.org> ). 
The saga continues in the courts and in the federal and provincial 
responses. Our lives are going to be touched by this event and it is 
wise to have the perspective that this book gives its readers. 
Loraine MacKenzie Shepherd. Feminist Theologies for a Post-
Modern Church: Diversity, Community, Scripture. New York: 
Peter Lang, 2002. 264 pp. US$29.95. ISBN 0-8204-5572-5. 
RALPH CARL WusHKE (Toronto School of Theology, 
Emmanuel College) 
L orraine MacKenzie Shepherd 's book testifies to the impact of postmodem methods in the theological academy. Diverse feminist approaches, poststructuralism, postliberal ap-
proaches and postcolonial theory are all shaking up the pre-
conceptions exemplified by the historical critical method, which held 
sway in biblical interpretation for several generations. 
Shepherd locates herself as a lesbian feminist pastor/theologian 
of the United Church of Canada (4). Interestingly, she does not 
choose the queer construction for her work, although she might be 
tempted to do so, insofar as it draws on lesbian, gay, bisexual and 
transgender identity and experience in church and society. 
Intersecting identities, another topic of interest to queer theorists, is 
also a significant subtheme in the book. Her raw material is the work 
of theologians, three of whom- Mary McClintock Fulkerson, K wok 
Pui-lan, and Kathryn Tanner- have an affinity for germinal thinkers 
who have inspired queer theorists: Judith Butler (55), Jacques Derrida 
(89), Michel Foucault ( l 08), Gayatri Spivak (81 ), and others. 
In the first part of her book, Shepherd competently summarizes 
and critiques the work of Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Fulkerson, 
K wok, and Tanner. All four have responded to the problems of 
theologies in modernity, including the claims to objectivity, false 
universalism (15), sexism and patriarchy (or "kyriarchy" in Schussler 


Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell. Just Married: Gay Marriage and the Expansion of Human Rights

Stout, John

John Grube. God, Sex and Poetry, Norm Sacuta. Garments of the Known

Espinaco-Virseda, Angeles

236 I Stout 
Social Sciences. One hopes that the publication of volumes of essays 
such as Homosexuality in French History and Culture will act as a 
catalyst to increased interest in queer French Studies, both in Canada 
and elsewhere. 
Erica Fischer. Aimee & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943. 
Translated from the German by Edna McCown. Los Angeles and 
New York: Alyson Books, 1998. 274 pp. Ill. US$12.95. ISBN 1-
55583-450-7. 
ANGELES ESPINACO-VIRSEDA (University of Alberta) 
0 n one level, A_imee & Jaguar .recoun~s the "Love ~to?'" of two women m a troubled ttme. Ltlly Wust (Atmee), a Gennan mother of four boys and the wife of a Nazi, and 
Felice Schragenheim (Jaguar), a young German-Jewish woman 
trying to hide her identity from the Nazis, fall in love in Germany in 
1943. But readers looking for straightforward lesbian romance will 
be surprised. Journalist-author Fischer adds another dimension to the 
story by incorporating many of the protagonists' documents, letters, 
poetry, and diaries and the recollections of friends and family. 
Fischer's work thus crosses the boundaries between biography, 
history, and fiction and frames the lovers' perspective between 
multiple voices. It is the resulting ambiguities that question the nature 
of sexuality, oral history, the truth of memory, and the lovers' story 
itself that make Aimee & Jaguar so interesting. 
Pivotal to the story is Jaguar 's arrest, incarceration, and forced 
labor in a series of Nazi prisons and concentration camps, and 
Aimee's impassioned efforts to help her. Their correspondence, often 
smuggled through the prisons by various people won over by Jaguar's 
wann personality, is extremely moving. It conveys the women's love 
and commitment to each other as well as the desperation and tonnent 
suffered by ·prisoners and their loved ones on the 'outside.' When 
Jaguar is captured and sent to Theresienstadt the author conveys a 
love that seems to transcend the limitations of physical separation. 
In this way, Aimee & Jaguar resembles a universal love story. In 
Book Reviews/Comptes rendus I 237 
fact, sexual orientation is .secondary to the theme of love and devotion 
and it is only the malicious comments made by disapproving relatives 
and acquaintances, as well as Nazi interrogators, that convey to the 
reader that Aimee and Jaguar's was hardly a 'normal' relationship 
for the place and time. 
Fischer never reveals how she, or the people in the book, 
conceptualize lesbian sexuality. Aimee's apparently eager 
participation in heterosexual relationships, including extramarital 
affairs with men, and her delayed sexual interest in women, begs 
the question of whether or not she would have been regarded as, or 
regarded herself as, a 'true ' lesbian, a bisexual , or a 'naturalized' 
lesbian. This is central to whether or not their relationship can even 
be termed ' lesbian.' 
Clearly, Fischer was limited by her subject's reluctance to 
provide explanations for many of the gaps in her story, and the author 
expressed frustration in trying to understand Lilly's postwar distance 
from lesbianism: "Why did she have to reject Helene [a suitor] and 
marry the horrible Willi Beimling? Why didn't she dare to step back 
into life in the seventies, when the lesbian scene in Berlin was in 
full swing?" (270). These suggest that sexuality is not a discrete entity 
but rather that it exists within a context complicated by, and 
intertwined with, other factors - personal, social , economic and 
historical - that limit and complicate choices and, as a result, 
confound simplified categorizations. Ironically, Fischer's decontext-
ualization of lesbianism suggests the importance of considering 
contexts. 
Yet, Fischer offers a limited insight to the social and historical 
conditions of same-sex relationships between women under National 
Socialism. By comparison, the oral histories and biographies about 
German lesbians by lise Kokula and Claudia Schoppmann are much 
more deliberate in capturing what life was like for lesbian couples 
during the Nazi era. 
Fischer 's casual treatment of sexuality leads to confusion about 
the book's objective. Since lesbianism is secondary to other themes, 
it is unclear whether the book is intended to make a claim for 
homosexual rights, as one would assume from the plot, or to condemn 
the persecution of Jews instead. Jaguar's persecution was not a result 
of her lesbianism (the Nazis did not expressly persecute homosexual 
women in quite the way they did homosexual men), but rather her 
238 I Espinaco-Virseda 
Jewishness and alleged resistance activities. Whereas Fischer 's 
epilogue carries a passionate message about individual responsibility 
against human injustice, her discussion is about the Holocaust and 
"ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia, with no mention of, and hence no call 
to action against, other human rights violations such as those based 
on sexual orientation. 
Historians will also be frustrated by the fictionalization of 
sources that results from Fischer's adoption of an omniscient 
narrative voice. Although the author reproduces substantial excerpts 
from interviews, she also makes claims about individuals' thoughts 
and feelings that are more akin to conjecture. For example, Fischer 
states that "GUnther Wust was thunderstruck ... Perhaps it was his 
fault, perhaps she [Lilly] simply needed a firmer hand" (38). This 
cannot have been GUnther's recollection since he did not survive 
the war to tell his story, but Fischer's embellishments are presented 
in an authoritative fashion, blurring the distinction between history 
and fiction. 
Yet this tension between fact and fiction is one of the things 
that makes Aimee & Jaguar so interesting. Fischer allows 
discrepancies in testimony to stand in contradiction to one another 
- for instance, the question of whether or not Aimee had a picture 
or bronze relief of Hitler in her living room . This becomes 
particularly important when Fischer presents Aimee's overzealous 
embrace of Judaism after the war. Was Aimee anti-Semitic before 
falling in love with Jaguar? Did guilt and shame over possible Nazi 
sympathies prompt Lilly's conspicuous silence about the years prior 
to her love affair? These inconsistencies remind the reader of the 
constructed, and perhaps even deliberately manipulated, nature of 
memory and history. 
On the other hand, it is these inconsistencies and manipulations 
that ultimately call the love story itself into question. For instance, 
Fischer creates suspicion around Aimee's motives for her zealous 
pursuit of linens, a Persian lamb coat, and other items, bequeathed 
to her by Jaguar, although it is up to the reader to decide if Aimee 
was driven to this out of greed, grief, or grim necessity. Less subtly, 
Fischer contradicts the impression that Aimee and Jaguar had an 
everlasting love when she baldly states: "I don't believe that Jaguar 
would have stayed with Aimee" (271 ). In the epilogue, Fischer 
reasonably concludes that "Aimee's story is full of holes" (270). 
Book Reviews/Comptes rendus I 239 
Thus, although Aimee & Jaguar is neither a traditionally narrated 
love story, nor a conventional academic history, the book draws its 
strength from the questions generated by the mixing of these genres. 
For those willing to overlook or even relish the book's ambiguities 
and its lack of histmical methodological rigor, Erica Fischer's work 
is a thought-provoking exploration of a complex human relationship 
that raises questions about the subjective nature of memory and the 
construction of the past. 


Erica Fischer. Aimee & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943

 ,  

Information

Marchand, Blaine

Images, Book 1 
BLAINE MARCHAND 
Ever since I began writing as a child, my poetry has explored the 
themes of solitude, love, and death. Lurking under my adolescent 
scribblings was the question of sexuality, which came to the fore in 
my fourth book, Bodily Presence. Increasingly, my poetry and my 
prose is preoccupied by differences- cultural and linguistic- in 
Canada and between Canadians and people they encounter in other 
parts of the world. This poem is from my current poetry manuscript 
The Craving of Knives. (blainemarchand@hotmail.com) 
I. Reflets dans I' eau 
"J'aime presque les images autant que Ia musique?" 
(Claude Debussy to Edgar Varese) 
We are only permitted impressions 
as the Docklands Light Rail 
pulls out of Tower Hill, 
past the sallow tenements 
where, through a window, I glimpse 
one man, arm raised, clutching 
a tea cup while another turns 
away. Your fingers staccato on my wrist, 
point to the distance, 
the autumn darkness clots, ink 
stain against hundreds of lights, 
festooning the mast of a ship, 
the highest building in the British Isles 
you say. I am only half listening, 
my attention still snagged on that passing scene 
in the kitchen. Would he set the cup 
down on the table, the other man 
torquere: JourTUJI of the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Studies Association I 
Revue de Ia Societe canadienne des etudes /esbiennes et gaies 
Vol. 2 (2000) © CLGSA I SCELG 
just come in? Or, is he about to 
chuck it, the other ready to duck? 
The train glides around a curve, 
lights at the water's edge 
stitch the basin 's loop. The cars stop 
in the concave of station: Canary Wharf. 
You lean forward, watch office workers, 
collars unbuttoned and ties askew, 
rush off escalators, push through opening doors, 
cram into aisles, onto seats. 
I think of the headlines back home 
-this developmental folly almost sinking 
the family whose fortune 
shores up my country. 
You recount how your ship docked here 
that first time you arrived from Durban 
to study, launch your career. 
Even after so many decades away 
your voice betrays the liberty, 
your feet pressing down 
onto the gangway as it bowed 
under passengers' weight, 
the air brisk in your mouth, 
your heart pounding, ignited 
by desire as porters shoved 
your steamertrunks into the boot 
of an uncle 's waiting car. 
The beat of your fingers against my knuckles 
draws me from my reverie. 
Your voice fills the shape of my ear. 
South Quay. We must disembark 
switch lines, go deep underground. 
I follow you through 
the doors onto the platform, let 
you walk ahead through moorings 
of light into shadow. 
You are still so elegant at eighty-one, 
your height full-drawn. 
Images I 125 
126 I Marchand 
Your turn toward me, your lips 
discretely curved to a kiss. 
2. Hommage a Rameau 
The paths are rutted deep in the earth 
as they arc, crisscross among unkempt grass 
around the oak stands of Hampstead Heath. 
I listen to your ragged breath 
as you mount a small incline. 
It is not so easy as it once was. 
You turn to wait as I catch up. 
You speak of death, 
as you have done several times 
in the last few days. 
Sometimes seriously, 
sometimes joking, ready with a scenario 
- a sudden tumble onto Oxford Street 
coming out from the Underground, 
courteous shoppers pausing, 
but not too long, weighted down with shopping bags 
they must move on. Never realizing, 
I add, you once brought 
London to its feet 
in Wigmore Hall. So long ago, 
you say. So long ago. 
But today the music you made is invigorating 
as autumn's air. The movements 
of branches those notes 
in the drawing room before we set out 
as we listened to tapes of performances broadcast 
across Europe, in Africa. I ask how you drew 
these sounds from inside? What deep recess 
like tap roots your fingers reached? 
You smile at my insistence, my imagery, 
quietly say: "practise." 
I persist. Before you began, 
did you fuse emotion to an image? 
Did you follow the sheetmusic note-perfect? 
Was it already arranged inside 
your head the way you have memorized 
every stop on the Piccadilly and Victoria lines? 
You laugh with such ease. 
There's talent, you know. 
Occasionally inspiration." Over your shoulder, 
along the Heath's edge, a white stallion 
vaults over a fallen tree. 
I think of the way my heart leaps 
when I look at you, ask why? 
Is this a search for a father? 
"Sometimes I just let go, follow instinct." 
You point the way 
along the path, through a clearing 
to the roadway, the house. 
We walk side by side in silence, 
past couples on benches unwrapping 
sandwiches, thermos of tea. You unlock 
the front door, we pause 
in the vestibule uncertain 
whether to go in or embrace here 
in the enclosed space, unsure 
what holds us together despite living 
in different hemispheres, generations apart. 
A low moan quakes your cousin's house. 
The tube speeds on its way to Golders Green. 
3. Mouvement 
Belsize Park. Chalk Farm. Camden Town. 
Tottenham Court Road to Leicester Square, 
past Charing Cross and Embankment. 
Our bodies sway with the rhythm of the coach, 
the movement of our thighs this morning. 
We touch and then roll away from each other. 
The powdery scent of your skin on my fingers. 
A tattooed couple in the seat across the aisle 
Images I 127 
128 I Marchand 
watch us intently. His lips move to her ear. 
A gloved hand covers her crimson mouth; 
at her wrist, thick loops of chain spill out. 
The two stand, leave. I watch your eyes 
follow in their wake. We, like them, 
believe the truth behind 
our relationship remains subterranean. 
Each day I have travelled with you beneath this city 
past stations with names I know chiefly 
from movies and books- Knightsbridge, Earl's Court, 
conjured images vague as waking dreams. 
For you, they are the fabric of youth. 
Depart here and just around the corner, 
the church where you staged your first recital; 
or here, pass under the subway, 
two blocks down, the bedsitter you 
and your first lover shared before the Blitz. 
Is our love this? A passing in and out 
of view, time distilled, remnants trapped inside 
the head or heart, a reflection, my face 
in the window, thin 
membrane that separates us 
from dug out earth as we roll 
onto Highbury & Islington. This station 
we enter and then leave behind, 
the route we have chosen 
not so straightforward, emotion 
close to hand as the folded map 
I always carry, refuse to put away. 
I trace and retrace our journey 
certain only where we've come from, 
wanting to anticipate but unable 
to follow the announcer's voice 
garbled through the speaker. 


Images

Callison, Darcey

Astaire's Feet and Travolta's Pelvis: Maintaining the Boy Code

Not a member yet

Parody of the Gay Games: Gender Performativity in Sport

New York '98

Ferial Mirage (Fata Morgana)

Kevin Bourassa and Joe Varnell. Just Married: Gay Marriage and the Expansion of Human Rights

John Grube. God, Sex and Poetry, Norm Sacuta. Garments of the Known

Erica Fischer. Aimee & Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943

Information

Images

Information

Astaire's Feet and Travolta's Pelvis: Maintaining the Boy Code

76

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