Untitled 1975–86

^{after Alvin Baltrop & Frank O’Hara}

Glorious!                     what mountain 
of mouths i could boulder my tongue 
from. what bountiful luck i must 
have acquired to own a debt 
from every man. i like this type of sweet; 
tongue stained in mulberry 
blood like new york concrete in june. and here 
we are again in june. with all the summer’s 
bees and root beer floats and boys screaming 
laughter into the jaws of a sprinkler head. and i, too, am 
so joyful here, i have forgotten that january 
ever existed. can you smell the bark? the branches 
and men slumping with fruit? i will miss this 
come fall, when the wind turns 
a sugared maple. it’s so cliche to cling 
to the boys i once kissed, but i will admit it, 
i have loved a boy ragged until the last 
leaf fell from his gums. 

Copyright © 2024 by jason b crawford. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 15, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

Subscribe to the Poem-a-Day Podcast 

  

“The Untitled 1975–86 series are ekphrastic poems based on photographs taken by Alvin Baltrop, a Black queer man who depicted queer life in the 1970s and 1980s on the New York Piers before and during the height of the AIDS epidemic. This specific poem was written after reading Frank O’Hara’s “Song” and thinking about the lyricality in poems. There is joy in how O’Hara speaks of New York. Here I wish to honor the loudness and joy of queer New York even in the face of losing loved ones. Oh, how we celebrate our dead.”
—jason b crawford