Song of the Radical Faerie
In me is the song of the Radical Faerie:
his quicksilver talisman,
his naked shimmy at Rooster Rock,
his bendy body slipped into Breitenbush spring.
He beckons to me from the circle, his hair the color of sky,
and in a ritual I don’t yet understand
I lay before him my immutable characteristics—
unburdening my height, my weight,
my chromosomes and crooked pinkies,
my embarrassment at the length of my cock.
In the heart of his song, I release it all
until I am stripped before the moon of his body,
stomach fluttering with baby faeries.
I give myself over to the circle,
to daisies braided with our hair,
to holding hands with men in the shadows of our lives.
There had been another song, once,
in the tongue of my first kiss,
in the smell of leather in his muscled shoulder
back when shoulders were something to look over,
not admire as they are here, held taut to the sun
for the golden shawl, learning to believe in Faeries.
—Stacy Brewster
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Stacy Brewster earned a BFA in Film & Television Production from NYU and worked professionally for many years in television and advertising production on both coasts. He facilitates workshops for Write Around Portland, a non-profit that provides free writing workshops for those without access to writing in community with others because of income, isolation or other barriers. Stacy’s short fiction and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Gertrude Press, the Madison Review, the Santa Fe Literary Review, Plenitude Magazine, the Minetta Review, qu.ee/r Magazine, the Summerset Review, and other journals. He lives in Oregon with his husband.