A Queer Icon

“To the lucky person who has never heard [Truman Capote’s voice], I can only say: imagine what a brussels sprout would sound like, if a brussels sprout could talk.“ - Gore Vidal

For me, it’ll always be Truman Capote,
the little dynamo, who walked into the KBI
dressed up like Tiffany’s breakfast,
a coat as thickly trimmed in fur
as any just-out socialite’s. The world
of Kansas investigation must have reeled
as if at Satan’s own strutting peacock.

Perhaps another man has been as much himself.
I haven’t read much Gore Vidal. The pillars of
the grand city are far too straight of line.
Too mannishly they dream, to me, too much
in imitation of the good old KBI.
I wouldn’t even call them queer.

And lo, we return to Truman, a city of the plane
from which a wild icon calls.