Selected Poems of Emanuel Xavier

By Emanuel Xavier

For the first time ever, a selected poetry collection from Emanuel Xavier, renowned LGBTQ poet and one of the Latinx community's treasures.

When he first emerged as a Nuyorican Poets Café slam poet in the 1990s, Emanuel Xavier quickly took his place as one of the first openly queer, celebrated, controversial and significant poets of the era. Now, decades later, as a former homeless teen and a hate crime survivor, Xavier still stands as one of America's most inspiring and powerful voices.

"Gay Nuyorican life is limned and exalted in these scintillating poems. Xavier, a fixture at Nuyorican Poets Cafe slams in Manhattan and a star of HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, gathers 28 poems that infuse searing social and political commentary into achingly personal reflections. Many paint a panorama of New York that is bustling and vibrant: 'Ricans and Dominicans drive around / with black-faced virgins and saints on their dashboards / blasting rap and freestyle / down the streets.' The poet's collection conveys his struggle as a gay man in an often homophobic culture in tones that range from the bruised confessional in 'Deliverance' ('Wiping / myself / staring at the blood / shit / scum / from the last trick / that once again / left me bruised / deep inside') to the prophetic voice of 'If Jesus Were Gay.' ('If the crown of thorns were placed on his head / to mock him as the / 'Queen of the Jews' / If he was whipped because fags are considered / sadomasochistic sodomites, / If he was crucified for the brotherhood of man / would you still repent?') There's a lot of pain from separation and repudiation in Xavier's verse-from his biological father's abandonment of the family, his mother's rejection of his gay sexuality, and America's disdain for Latino immigrants. The volume is thus full of poetic portraits of outsiders and castoffs that can take strange and hallucinatory forms, as in 'Bushwick Bohemia, ' where a slacker is 'lying shirtless on the couch blunted out of his mind / staring at the roach on the ceiling / one single roach in a vast desert / or maybe an alien exploring a new world'-a grungy, Kafkaesque yet somehow hopeful and even liberating tableau of arrival and persistence. And the poet's life generates bleak, bracing wisdom in 'Beside Myself': 'You are not going to be remembered. / The best thing you ever did was keep a cat / alive for over sixteen years. / All you have is that rent-stabilized apartment / with the cracked paint and broken windows.' Xavier's many fans (and newbies as well) will be entranced by his evocative language, subtle rhythms, and fearless gaze." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rebel Satori Press
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021

Emanuel Xavier

Emanuel Xavier took the New York City spoken word scene by storm in 1996, quickly becoming one of the most significant voices to emerge from the neo-Nuyorican poetry movement. Following in the tradition of writers/performers like Miguel Piñero, Xavier captivated audiences with a fresh and poignant brand of art that celebrated sexuality, Latino heritage, and the often brutal streets of New York. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Pier Queen and Americano, and a novel Christ-Like.

Book preview

PREFACE

Twenty-five years ago, in 1996, I was in my mid-twenties and working at an LGBTQ Bookstore in New York City. I had already experienced a lifetime of pain.

The history of who fathered me was mystifying at best. I was the victim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of an older cousin. Since the age of three, my mother raised me in Bushwick along with her boyfriend, who was married with children. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment where I slept on a sofa bed in the living room. At the age of ten, my maternal grandfather in Ecuador, a man I looked up to from a far distance as a father figure, died in his fifties. By the time I was a teen, I came out, at a time when gay men were still shunned due to the AIDS pandemic. Instead of the love and support I needed, I found myself temporarily out on the streets. I was allowed back home to finish high school on the condition that we never spoke about my homosexuality and I never came out to anyone else. Besides having to keep this as my own secret, my first crushes were on straight boys who would never love me back. I had no innocence to speak of as my virginity had already been taken from me as a child. My first kiss was unmemorable and likely with a drunken stranger. By my early twenties, I was ushered into gay New York City nightlife and introduced to designer