sabina at the dyke bar 

Hair swinging, lipstick on teeth. Sabina on the dance floor, cigarette smoke hanging round her head like a veil. Chipped red nail polish, nose ring crooked, Sabina, married at 14 Sabina. Outrageous vintage dress, like something they wore in the 50s, but she’s on the dance floor. All sorts of girls, buzz cut girls and cutoff shirt girls, girls who just got to San Francisco, girls who are gonna sleep on someone’s floor tonight, girls who own the place and the one next door, but Sabina’s dancing alone. 

Sabina having another beer but she’s gotta get back home to her baby Julia, she writes poems. Sabina in her fishnets, Sabina femme, Sabina laughing, they love her. They loved her, too, the Romans, they loved her, she was a real modern-day Livia. She didn’t get cities, though, or her husband’s tears, she wasn’t any Dionysian beauty. No books about Sabina, Sabina someone’s beloved, someone’s god. 

Sabina, I will make the pilgrimage to Elefsina and kiss another girl at the foot of your temple. Sabina drunk on giddy confusion, smudges like Christmas lights decorating the bar, god she’d marry Julia right here if it were legal but who cares. Julia tattooing poems into statue flesh, making the world sing for her love. They put the L in front of the GBT cause lesbians looked after the sick gay men when doctors wouldn’t, they gave blood. No poems about them.

Sabina married at 14, Sabina in the way. The Emperor Hadrian*. Her fingerprints were the men who caged her, bitch Sabina, plain Sabina. Sabina and Julia invoked by lesbians in the history department, Sappho on the backs of their tongues. No books. No paintings. Men can love, men can want, women must take. The Emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, his 14-year-old lover Antinous, the child Antinous, drowning in the Nile. The boy Antinous of Bithynia, the cross hanging from Hadrian’s neck.

Where was Sabina? Sabina in the footnotes. Sabina at the last lesbian bar in the country. Sabina censored on a TV screen, parental advisory Sabina. Sabina one sentence in the biography. Sabina implied, suggested, coded, insinuated, Sabina possibly, Sabina if-that’s-how-you-choose-to-see-it. Sabina dancing sloppily, bracelets crowning her wrists, Sabina beloved, lighting another cigarette. Even awake she dreams of Julia. Sabina remembered, if just by me, if just by us. 

*And his wife Vibia Sabina.