Michael Broder
Love Story
What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.
—Erich Segal
What can you say about a 25-year-old—
man, woman, boy, girl, mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin
who died
who was beautiful and brilliant
who loved Lou Reed, David Bowie, Barbra Streisand, Liza (With a Z) Minnelli, Prince, Blondie, Juice Newton, Kurtis Blow, The Sugarhill Gang, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, LL Cool J, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
Who loved me
Who fucked me
Who infected me
Who was infected by me
This was our love story
This was our life, our love, our rock and roll—the summer of sarcoma
That was then
This is now: “Why do America’s black gay and bisexual men have a higher H.I.V. rate than any country in the world?” (Linda Villarosa writing in The New York Times, Pride Month 2017)
What can you say?
What can you say?
What can you say?
Write a fucking poem
Write a fucking poem
Write a fucking poem
I’m warning you, if you people keep this up
I’m going to have to start writing poems again
Michael Broder is the author of This Life Now (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, and Drug and Disease Free (Indolent Books, 2016), edited and with an introduction by Jameson Fitzpatrick. He is the founding publisher and managing editor of Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press in Brooklyn. Broder and his husband, the poet Jason Schneiderman, were among the first gay men to be married in the United States when they exchanged their vows under a chuppah quilted by Schneiderman’s mother, Robin Fromme Schneiderman, in a ceremony presided over by Schneiderman’s father, David Schneiderman, in North Truro, Massachusetts, on June 3, 2004. (Broder’s mother, Lee Brecher Broder, 82 years old and too frail to travel, listened on the phone as Jason and Michael walked down a wooden slatted path from the hotel to the beach.) They live in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, with a colony of stray and feral cats.
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Here is today’s prompt
(optional as always)
Write a poem that invokes a canonical love story, as today’s poem does with reference to the 1970 novel Love Story by Erich Segal (which became an acclaimed film starring Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal). Choose a love story from history, mythology, literature, film, or any of the performing arts (musical theatre, dramatic theatre, ballet, opera, etc.).