Calle Pelayo
Revisiting after thirty years
this street where the gay bars of Madrid
opened at midnight and the men came and went
in shadows, dressed in leather, lathered in neon,
down the cellar steps to the smoky rooms
where LA porn played on cheap TVs. You and I
together in the hot and sweaty rooms with the smell
of cologne as the handsome and burly leaned and leered
or in their boredom studied the doorway for the parade of
innocents or worldly, as the hours slipped away
and the bartender greeted the regulars, the desperate,
the charmed. Here again in Chueca
now at morning as storefronts are shuttered,
and we pass slowly by.
—Walter Holland
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Walter Holland, Ph.D., is the author of three books of poetry: A Journal of the Plague Years: Poems 1979-1992, Transatlantic, and Circuit. He also is the author of the novel, The March. He has taught American Poetry at the New School in New York City and taught poetry at G.M.H.C. He lives in New York City. He currently writes book reviews for Lambda Literary journal on-line and for Pleiades. He also co-wrote the book and lyrics with composer Ted Kociolek for The Age of Innocence: An American Romance, a musical based on the novel by Edith Wharton.