Elaine Sexton
Dear Larry Josephs
is reincarnated as a blue jay.
I see you today: insistent,
charming, annoyingly
steely blue eyed. Before the Internet,
read those six syllables:
be fore the In ter net
you died, so when I search
for your death date (dear, friend,
I forget) at first
I find nothing. I guess.
In my no longer existent phone book
under the letter “J”
my recollection stutters,
who still keeps numbers
in a book? The paper and ink
you favored, writer, reporter, first one “out”
from your last job
at The Times,
we have you to thank
for one face of AIDS
in the newsroom,
for the way the word “gay”
eased into the official vernacular
replacing “homosexual,”
you to thank , before marriage equality,
pushing for
partners to be named
in The Times obituaries as who
we are survived by,
you: upright
queer
man
among straight-laced colleagues,
you: Ivy, too,
your nature to mess with
all that’s fit to print.
Here you are.
Dead in 1991.
Dead at 34.
Here for all who don’t know
you, dear Larry Josephs. Still here,
still queer, still dear.
Elaine Sexton is the author of three collections of poetry, Prospect/Refuge (2015, Sheep Meadow), Causeway (New Issues, 2008), and Sleuth (New Issues, 2003). Her poems, reviews, and essays have appeared in numerous periodicals including American Poetry Review, Poetry, Art in America, Oprah Magazine, Pleiades, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry Daily. She teaches poetry and text and image workshops at the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute and New York University. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. elainesexton.org
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Today’s poem celebrates a man who made a difference by being openly gay and HIV-positive in the newsroom of a major US newspaper. Write a poem about a person who made a difference by being out about their HIV-positive status in literature, the arts, culture, society, politics, etc.