"Homosexuality" by Henri Cole

Homosexuality

First I saw the round bill, like a bud;
then the sooty crested head, with avernal eyes
flickering, distressed, then the peculiar
long neck wrapping and unwrapping itself,
like pity or love, when I removed the stovepipe
cover of the bedroom chimney to free
what was there and a duck crashed into the room
(I am here in this fallen state), hitting her face,
bending her throat back (my love, my inborn
turbid wanting, at large all night), backing away,
gnawing at her own wing linings (the poison of my life,
the beast, the wolf), leaping out the window,
which I held open (now clear, sane, serene),
before climbing back naked into bed with you.




Previously published by The New Yorker; appears in Blackbird and Wolf (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007)

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Photo Credit: Claudia Gianvenuti

Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan to a French mother and an American father. He has published eleven collections of poetry and received many awards, including the Jackson Prize, the Kingsley Tufts Award, the Rome prize, the Berlin Prize, the Lenore Marshall Award, and the Medal in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His books have been translated into French, German, Spanish, Italian and Arabic. He has also published Orphic Paris, a memoir. He teaches at Claremont McKenna College.

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