Young Brother
Poetry
by Jéanpaul Ferro

They all want to make him
a hero for his deadly disease,

but it is I who swam with him,
gave the gift of him,

the glint of bodies, naked,
down by the old Scituate reservoir,

growing up together,
not our religion, not our color,
not in the field where we were born,
not even our experiences together,

only the ghost of his life that begins
to waver in my arms; and him as he’s
whispering to me:

“I’ve been waiting for you.
I’ve been waiting for you.
I’ve been waiting for you
for so long, brother.”

Jéanpaul Ferro’s work has recently been featured in The Cortland Review, Southern Cross Review, Portland Monthly Magazine, Hawai’i Review, The Newport Review, and others. His book of short fiction, All the Good Promises, was published in 1994 by Plowman Publishers. He has recently been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the literary e-zine, The Rose & Thorn. Additionally, some of his short fiction will appear this summer in Underground Window’s “Best of” anthology.

Hades, also known as Aides—
the “Unseen”—became invisible
when wearing his helmet, a gift
from the Cyclops.

Deaf to flattery, numb to sacrifice,
the underworld ruler was once moved
by the sad song of a beautiful and talented man
seeking his lost love.

Orpheus would later turn to men
after his wife died the second time.

Could even the god of darkness be that dark,
as to inflict the same grief twice, opening wider
the already infinitely gaping wound?
Greedy to sustain all his tenants,
his wealth of death, it seems yes.

Such power appears cowardly
armed with invisibility
against a weaker race
so dependent on sight,
(and to think—this gift,
for a god with everything,
had come from a creature
with just one eye.)

Do they—our lost lovers
and our lovers yet to be lost—
expect us to attempt similar
senseless journeys? To sing,
to beg, to offer our gifts
for yet one more chance
to lose them?

Helmet-less, we don
our only protection:
We already love men
and know how to turn to them
in the repetitious waves of grief.

Michael Montlack's work has appeared in Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Christopher Street, New York Native, Bay Windows, In the Family, Lodestar Quarterly, and other magazines. He lives in New York City, teaches at Berkeley College, and is an associate editor for Mudfish.

March 2006