Long Division: Poems

by Rudy Kikel

It is said that relationships are truly holy, that through relationships we find ourselves. In Long Division, we journey with the poet through his relationships in search of identity and self. We feel his gayness devastating his chddhood, alienating him from family, neighborhood, and church. We follow a life in which lovers and friends come and go. We discover his story. Long Division is about communion with others and with ourselves. It gives continuity to our identities, making whole a gay boy and his image in drag in a mirror, making holy a boy playing teasing Salome to (his) own/beholding Herod.

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1992

Reviews

[Inverted · Rating 1 out of 5]

Insipid, self-absorbed. Couldn't fathom why this was Lambda-nominated, especially alongside Essex Hemphill and with opening lines like: "Frankly, I was hurt when you first snubbed me." (Dreaming) and "All but one: you were my best / friend" (2. Access Granted).

Rudy used up two of the five sections — 18 poems in total, from You, Me, and Mootsie and You and Me: Concluding Remarks — to offer a series of murky rationalizations on why he couldn't love his best friend back. Only to then, in the succeeding section, whip up the longest poem in the collection, with a meandering, confused proclamation of love to Joe Brainard, with lines like

At a first reading
of the interview, I admit
I dreamt that perhaps if I wrote to you...
But you can see now what I need
from you, can't you? Nothing. Nothing from you.
Everything of the positive—
and the negative! what else shall I call
the shadow self I have fathomed
in Gerard's photo?— I have drawn from you,
whom I do not and may never
know. Well, that cuts my work out. To you, then,
I propose nothing, not even
that we be friends. Of course, we might become
friends, still. I think I would like that...
Even lovers, because like you "I think
I'd love to fall madly in love
with someone." Although like you, too, "I think
I'm already too much into
a certain way of life."
(— Everyone's Joe Brainard and Mine)

For scale: this whole chunk is about 1/10th of the entire poem.

Long Division proved to be a test of my patience. What pisses me off is that this collection points to literary access — and a gay literary tradition — that intersects with privilege. Rudy Kikel didn't have much to say (in and out of queerness), but was given the space to say it anyway.