Issue 29 | Fall 2023

The Shame of Loving Another Poet

Justin Vicari

For love without courage is an insult to those who hate.

—Norman Mailer

I gather his drafts to read in bed.

His language is sexy but cannot be

Held like a man.

Lately, his heart, too,

Like the locked and secret room

Where we kissed.

Bound by the invisible, not for long.

Too soon, passion

Becomes a rare antique

Whose value ascends

Even as it seems on the verge of vanishing

Into air, clear through. Because I do not wish

To be fooled anymore.

My inward ways were as alien to him

As the stars above.

On the desk, my poems and his

Are doing it.

I have seen our bodies everywhere,

Everywhere, a bit thumbed-through

But new,

As if they would never grow old!

Now the world is eager to identify your metaphors.

It rushes in to lay claim to you,

Instead of the other way around

As it should be.

Meanwhile, love

Recites itself in pauses, its

Tongue flavorless and a space moves

Into you to sing.

III

I never knew him then, all virginal, and yet,

At times I see in him

That awkward child he claims to have been.

Could it be that even then he was not virginal?

I wonder.

It’s been weeks since I’ve seen your face.

What do you look like?

I eat stale bread and only the most painful

Poets: Andrade and Dylan.

This afternoon I made myself go out and walk,

Wanting all the time to drown

Your doorstep in my flowers.

Now I drift naked through my rooms

With all the lights on, as if

You watched me through the windows.

About the Author

Justin Vicari is a poet, film and literary critic, and translator. Vicari is almost completely self-taught, although they attended classes in writing and philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Vicari’s first full-length book of poems, The Professional Weepers (2011, Pavement Saw Press), received the Transcontinental Award. Their second full-length book of poems is In Search of Lost Joy (2018, Main Street Rag). Their multi-genre work has appeared in such journals as Rattle, Fence, Illuminations, Rogue Agent, Third Coast, Hotel Amerika, Spoon River, Barrow Street, Oranges & Sardines, Interim, 32 Poems, The Ledge, Southern Poetry Review, The Pedestal, Postmodern Culture, BlazeVOX, Two Lines, Salzburg Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, Cahiers d’Octave Mirbeau, and others. In 2020, Vicari was nominated for Best of the Net. Their translation of J.-K. Huysmans’ A Dilemma, published by Wakefield Press, was chosen by the French embassy as one of thirty must-read French books for the summer of 2015.