Orpheus in Bathhouse Garden
By Mark Cunanan
JL Javier, Untitled photograph, Hounding series, 2023. Dimensions variable.
Image description: Color photograph of a nose and smiling mouth of a face emerging from pitch darkness into a spotlight.
Orpheus
Sometimes I feel their side-eye from the wide net of my sight,
muttering words to strike a deal, playing rogue to bait attention
after fits of man laughter or whistling like cops at night. Once
I cast a backward glance and find there only a trick of my own
shadow. I wanted them gone for long, visions of frenzy
I conjure to keep me company, else some abstract utopia
whereto. I lose my courtly others and now there is me
to get to the bottom of it—to get to the bottom of it all.
JL Javier, Untitled photograph, Hounding series, 2023. Dimensions variable.
Image description: Color photograph of a monumental green creature shining brightly against a dark sky. On close inspection it is, in fact, a thick growth of green vines climbing over electrical wires.
Bathhouse Garden
Where in our body survives the incurable disease?
We prowl the garden naked then leave our hands grimy
with the fruit: nectarine, bitter tangerine, golden apple,
plum. When the sap clings sticky on skin our bodies
warm to touch: breath after stymied breath
we blow on the prone wind. And hearing sounds
we wrap our waists in leaves, hide among
thickets, our serpent’s belly curled from ankle to heel.
He walks the garden unawares with garments of skin
and towels every body clean. But he orders their leave,
marking each border to drive us from man. Now
from outside ourselves we step, or behind closed doors,
drive us through the underground dark. Every which way
not ours and forever most unbidden, we will multiply
our tribe—and from the same blood—eat the days of our lives.
Mark Cunanan is from Pampanga, Philippines. His work has appeared in Kritika Kultura, Cordite Poetry Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, and The Deadlands.
JL Javier (https://www.jljavier.com) is a Filipino photographer based in Manila who explores the idea of images as spaces for humanity, life, and connection. His work spans portraiture, documentary photography, and photojournalism. Javier’s work has been published in CNN Philippines, Vogue PH, Rolling Stone PH, L’Officiel PH, Standart Magazine, and elsewhere. His personal photo-based projects have been included in group exhibitions in local galleries and museums.
Fleeting and sticky, the gay men of Mark Cunanan’s new poems move through underworlds.