Poem: "Bromine" at Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation's YouTube Channel

In the winter of 2021, I got an email from photographer Steven Burton about shooting a video on behalf of the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation. I'd won a literary grant from the organization two years prior, which had helped me complete two books: Periodic Boyfriends (2023) and Fassbinder: His Movies, My Poems (2024) so I readily agreed even though Burton's email came at a time when social distancing was very much a part of the pandemic. Given this larger reality, we decided to shoot outside -- in Prospect Park specifically -- despite the snow and sub-freezing temperatures. The idea was to make a short film spotlighting one of my poems: "Bromine" from the earlier collection. And while the title doesn't appear, you do see the rest of the sonnet typed out by my numb fingers on a manual typewriter as the rattling keys act as a kind of soundtrack. You can watch the video on YouTube. You can read the full poem below:

Bromine

I’ve been the villain of my own story

(not the salty hero I’d like to be).

I’ve caused pain, not as in allegory,

but real pain to real pals regretfully.

One incident still haunts me. Man, there have

been many! Though most of my wrongdoings

evaporate over time. My motives

were base; longstanding lust, my undoing.

My mark? The soulmate of my closest friend.

You can likely see where this is going –

Betrayal’s the surest path to one end

and the saddest part for me is knowing

that I broke not one bond but two that night.

I doubt, I’d do that again, but I might.

"Bromine" initially appeared online at Grand Little Things in 2020 then was republished in its entirety as part of a review by Michael Fialkowski at The Loch Raven Review in 2023. The above image is a still from Steven Burton's short, Who is Drew Pisarra? which can be viewed in its entirety on Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation's YouTube channel.