Dan Vera

Lingering Fraction

  “Some homosexuals claim infallibility in identifying others of their kind ‘by the eyes—there’s a look that lingers a fraction of a second too long.’” “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern” The New York Times, December 17, 1963

Hail the lingering fraction that secured us,
the inborn longing that led us to one another,
one by one on the street corners,
under the glowing lamps of the inviting city.

Praise the strength of a spirit that attempted to believe,
that ventured forth from body to body,
when the law and word was to condemn,
to revile, to electrocute a mind so wedded to love.

Holy the glimmer of recognition
in the eyes of those we sought,
who reflected back that fraction of belonging,
who spoke without words
what the heart would dare admit.

Dan Vera is a writer, editor, watercolorist, and literary historian. The recipient of the Oscar Wilde Award for Poetry and the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, he’s co-editor of Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books) and author of two books of poetry, Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen Press) and The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books). Vera’s work is featured by the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and included in college and university curricula; various journals including Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly; and in anthologies including Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, The Traveler’s Made Mecum, and The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South.