by Joanna Brown
for David Buckel
Early morning: can we afford to linger. on the plush pink sofa blaze of cherry blossoms? Their dewy cry reminds me of a young man’s lips. Such flowers wake earlier as the winters warm. Thoughts turn to my friend, split lip, rose bruise, from a night gone wrong – that park was in Jerusalem. But this is Prospect, and what are ours? Another gay man dead. This one, I never met, but love in pictures & papers: the gentle tilt of chin, the cloud forest gaze, the sea-change work that helped an ocean of us. He chose a self-anointment: cloying carbons soaking hair and skin, then the sun came down to feast.
