COME ANGELS! COME BEASTS!
Books
Revelations by Ruben Quesada
Sibling Rivalry Press
Paperback, 38 pages, 2018
ANITA BRYANT WHO WANTED TO DROWN A FAGGOT REBELLION
“Come angels! Come beasts!” Ruben Quesada beckons on the opening page of his dazzling wild chapbook. Have the four horsemen from the Apocalypse come to break seals? Quesada’s exclamation shakes the spine of the book. Into the glue and pulp and ink of this text are the raw nerves of the speaker of these poems who is calling out to the beasts and angels of this world. Joy and hurt are sealed within a book called Revelations.
In the twelfth revelation Quesada writes:
I have tried to avoid
blaming myself for being called a faggot
for most of my life I could not escape it
but those days have gone like the gospel
of Anita Bryant who wanted to drown
a faggot rebellion like that one at Stonewall
in the summer of 1969 and we shall overcome
How the line breaks break. How Quesada slices off “gospel” and introduces us to Anita Bryant on the next line. How “gospel” accidentally half-rhymes with “Stonewall.” Revelations is written by a gay man who has escaped crucifixion. Hallelujah. Revelations arrives in the world when the world could use some revelations.
Revelations crashes and mashes hope and yearning and strife and prayer together. The poems strive to overcome after Anita Bryant’s attempt to “drown a faggot rebellion.” Anita Bryant is less known now for her rendition of “Paper Roses” or for her orange juice commercials than for the fact she opposed gay rights in 1977. She’s a footnote of ugliness about as small as the period at the end of this sentence now. She continues to advocate fundamentalist Christian values while each decade has brought her bankruptcy, divorce and alienation.
Anita Bryant aged. Quesada grew. The world changed. Newspapers disappeared. Records became curios. The telephone became a tiny office in your hand. Homosexuality went from a psychiatric illness to acceptable and, at are historical. They stake a claim that is somewhat surprising. They seek salvation.
