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PORTSIDE CULTURE

IN A BERLIN BAR  
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Rafaella Del Burgo

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_ Poet Raffaela Del Bourgo offers a quick intro to sexual politics,
reminding us that sex is "a tune both familiar and strange." _

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Stella says it first,
_I am not a lesbian._
I say, _I'm not one either,_
On the stage a full orchestra,
warm thirties jazz.
Men, mostly dressed in glittery hats and straps,
dance with other men,
and the women in three-piece suits,
striped, and ties,
dance with other women.

The slender man I came with,
who is not enough of a woman
or is too much of a woman,
is dancing with Stella's pretty brother
who is wrapped in a red silk dress.

Outside, winter snow.
Inside, my friend laughing,
head tipped back, white throat exposed.
Stella glances at him.
Says, _I have faith. God
does not pay attention to what we wear.
God does not make judgments about who we love._
I've heard this before and shrug.

She is plain. Chalky moon-faced,
flat eyes the color of slate.
She is also in a silky dress,
keeping time with her lacquered fingernails
on the table top.

_Come on_, she tells me. _We might as well.
I'll be the girl first,
then we can change._

We make our way onto the floor.
She places my right hand on her waist,
which is both tender and firm.
Rests her left hand on my shoulder.
Stella's good; we move easily to the music,
a tune both familiar and strange.

_California poet Raffaela Del Bourgo has published widely and won
numerous awards. Lynne Knight tells us that her "poems take to places
as far flung as Tasmania or Afghanistan, Israel or Iceland, letting us
see across time and space, but also into love and loss." Her latest
book is A Tune Both Familiar and Strange._  

* sexual politics
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* intersexuality
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