Assistant Editor Madeleine Wattenberg: In Cruising Utopia (NYU Press, 2009), José Estaban Muñoz posits queerness-as-horizon, stating about a poem by James Schuyler that “[m]oments of queer relational bliss, what the poet names as ecstasies, are viewed as having the ability to rewrite a larger map of everyday life.” In “Cruising” Scott Broker instead offers the shoreline in order to undergo this remapping. He uses the diction of courtly love, and its punning, to elevate acts of public gay sex. But the scene is also framed by signs warning visitors to stay away from a cordoned-off space where the endangered snowy plover nests; there’s no stronger symbol of reproductive futurity, or straight time, than eggs. In tightly woven reflection, this poem asks: What’s the difference between having rights and being regulated? Between being endangered and regarded as dangerous? And what must be offered up, or buried, for “a chance at tomorrow”?
To hear Scott read his poem, click below:
Cruising
The moon hits the black
pebble beach. The moon makes
the black beach blue. I have a man
in my hand and, soon, against my tooth.
Cruising becomes regal in proper light,
or lightlessness. If only they could see us
here: knighted by kinder swords, we sip
chaliced fluid like thirsty aristocrats.
Behind, the dunes are whipped
into a thick cream, their edges protected
from feet like ours. Nesting season,
signs read. Keep back! Snowy plovers near.
You can sometimes hear their wings
through the dark. What does it mean to be
endangered? We, too, fly at the first flash
of light, but no one hides us on the far
side of nylon fencing. I would bury myself
beside eggs if it meant anything
for a chance at tomorrow.
Scott Broker, a Lambda fellow, is a queer writer currently based in Columbus, Ohio. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Idaho Review, Catapult, Passages North, American Literary Review, and The Rumpus, among others. He can be found at www.scottjbroker.com.
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