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From the archives

Object Lessons

Lisa Alward’s debut collection

The Other Side of “Irish Eyes”

Brian Mulroney abroad and at home

But Is It Trash?

Evaluating art in the age of conspicuous consumption

The World’s Athletes

 

Sitting there long enough, I got a free coffee

& the grouchy homophobic waiter ate the two leftover tacos,

watching on television figure skater couples

who looked like women, whatever that means,

who looked homosexual, whatever I mean by that,

in the country of vodka & bad pop music,

Mandelstam’s shivering, Akhmatova’s prayers,

all the athletes who bruised their shins in Vancouver,

sniffled past tent city & into waterfront condos,

all the homosexual lovers snuggling in the snow.

 

Even the most committed allies don’t want to miss hockey.

 

They said you couldn’t kiss us. They said.

Couldn’t feel this. They said.

The numb snow. What aids. What abets.

An advertisement for an alcoholic beverage

featuring one man, one woman.

I have given up my athletic refusals.

Have woken next to a lover in shiny tights.

Four years ago we were reading poetry in tent city.

It was temporary, for us at least, right?

But the tenderness lasts.

“I am different from you.” This was said four years ago.

And later: “How could I have ever thought I was different from you?”

To wake up four years later, walk up to the stage

& let them wrap gold so coldly, so tightly around your neck.

 

Jen Currin has published four books of poetry, including The Inquisition Yours, which won the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry in 2011, and School, which was a finalist for three prizes. She has recently finished her first collection of stories.

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