Cold river

by Joan Larkin

Joan Larkin's Lambda Award-winning Cold River deals in universal obsessions: sex and death, filtered in this case through memory and social consciousness. Innocence meets experience early in the book, intertwining in the tercets of "In the Duchess (Sheridan Square, 1973)," in which the young speaker watches "the illegal dancing" of "strong beauty" on the scuffed barroom floor. Remembering the scene from today, she knows she'll "soon cut my hair, soon / sharpen cuffs and creases,/ burn bold as the stone/ butch staring back/ in whose smile my fear/ and wanting found a mirror." Throughout the book, she tempers her bold politics with a warm embrace for her friends, as in "Sonnet Positive," a fine poem wherein the speaker accompanies a friend on a "slow drive/ to Vermont on back roads--lunch, a quick look/ at antiques." Concluding when they pull over to examine some merchandise, she writes: He's not actually sick yet, he reminds me, reaching for the next pill. His bag's full of plastic medi