emerging male writers: a special issue, part ii || icarus on fire island
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Icarus on Fire IslandAuthor(s): Reginald ShepherdSource: Callaloo, Vol. 21, No. 2, Emerging Male Writers: A Special Issue, Part II (Spring, 1998),p. 284Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3299422 .
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ICARUS ON FIRE ISLAND
by Reginald Shepherd
Two loves I have, each one too fair for me to be completed in his eyes, summer open with Mediterranean blue where care is left aside, the most of available light. The Sunday beach with you, spangled with tan men, their perfect skin
reproach and visible reward (until the sun abandons them and they withdraw into the inked-in sky to shine unseen for those who don't concern themselves with light), I searched the air dazzled with kites for them, I couldn't want them less. Since shunning pain I ease can neverfind, I'll score the sky with string, and there incise my name, until the gusts decline.
I have dispersed the clouds with one small wisp of breath, his hand commands a paper dragon through an insurgent breeze. The painted silk is stolen by flight, the line snaps or he lets go of the line, playing it out
against a sudden updraft. That was my future life, lost track of all a summer afternoon: black point in a northeast corner of blue
descending, a mote across an open eye of sky where light drains away.
Callaloo 21.2 (1998) 284
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