One Poem
by Chris Gylee
Stuyvesant Park
(Seven Lines for Samuel)
Samuel taught me / all the tickets, yellow
Fell in love with Bob, & fell / through golden drapes
By the sea, onto rocks / a thickset man in workman’s greens
My heart, claustrophobic / big & knuckled
I ran, gleaming purple / people gathered in the aisle
& we sang / above his groin, an appendectomy scar
Singing for Samuel & our excess energy, some / crazy fuckin’ lunatics
Note
“Stuyvesant Park (Seven Lines For Samuel)” samples quotes from Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel R. Delany (1999)
Author photo by Óscar GonzálezChris Gylee (he/him, Stockport, UK 1983) is a queer writer and artist living between rural Finland and Berlin. His poems include the online collection FORTY, the micro-chapbook Ten For ‘A’ (Ghost City Press, 2024), and the short series Multiverse Listening (x 7). Chris was long-listed for the Cúirt New Writing Prize 2023. www.chrisgylee.com / @chrisgylee