Basil Vaughn Soper

Nan Goldin Has a Moon in Scorpio and New York’s Rising is Cancer

I. Space

It must’ve been a spring night,
the windows were partly   open.
to let out the smoke

Forcibly        detached  thighs
even after I said “no”.

His fist.                                My jaw.

My chin     and shoulders
of queens who I leaned on.

Coming            down
staring up at fluorescent lights.

My                     heart
and the droning of the 4 train.

II. The Lipstick on the Collar

Our glistening graffiti island
(the corner less and predictable capital)
was feeling like a sinking metropolis.

Max’s Kansas City, on Park and 18th,
birthed the ghosts of
The New York Dolls,
the Ramones,
Blondie,
Klaus Nomi
and Sid.

Why couldn’t my devotion have been temporary,
as glib as the art galleries in the villages.

Lowbrow tumbled.
Highbrow resurrected. 

III. Clinging

Plagued now,

once rarely clothed
in the ramble
on Stonewall’s dance floor
sunbathing on the Chelsea Piers,

were now in permanent gowns and infection.

Unlike a lover’s t-shirt draped on a bed post,
spur   of the   moment died with them.

We did own them, right?
Our villages.

Settlements,
they always come for them.

I remember before they arrived,
the misery (and the freedom) of us.