Excerpt: Michael Montlack's Poem "On Castro" From Cool Limbo

Author Michael Montlack--known for his Lambda Literary Award-nominated anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them, and poetry chapbooks Cover Charge, Girls, Girls, Girls, and The Slip is back with a new tome of genre-bending verses titled Cool Limbo. Ranging from the hilarious to the poignant -- or sometimes embodying both simultaneously -- the book's cover, of a classic '70s chick smoking weed and drinking a beer poolside instead of babysitting the frantic young swimmer vying for her attention -- the book is subversive, perverse and a whole lotta fun.

For a taste of what lay between these covers, Montlack recommended this poem -- one of his many amusing and touching works:

On Castro

You might be stopped and commanded
at 3 am--to help sift the curbside debris
for the rhinestoned Mr. Potato Head earring
some breathless Chinese drag queen--Ida Ho--
dislodged during her demure attempt to re-bouf
her bouffant, sashaying home in platform thongs
from yet another benefit for dyslexic children
of Neo-Buddhist-Jew dykes on bikes.

This may be the same revolutionary corner
on which Harvey Milk started his business--
down the block from Moby Dick's and Jackhammers,
where sagging gray men won't surrender
their black leather hot pants, admiring from stools
glossy be-glittered kids aimed for clubs uphill
or in the Haight--those boyish girls and girlie boys
passing like a sequin storm as you squat and pan
--some drunken drafted gold digger.

But when you discover that sandy earring,
Ida'll be so grateful--her outfit again complete.
My hero, she'll sigh. You saved him. Now
his partner won't be alone. And neither will you
or anyone there on Castro--never quiet or closed
to any wandering freak or square, native or foreigner--
and always just a little more American
than America is willing to admit.

To purchase Cool Limbo, click here.