GLR November-December 2022

did these photographs come to be? Who’s snapping them, any way? The authors offer a cursory explanation involving the technology of the day, which apparently allowed the subjects to take a “selfie” by means of a Kodak self-timing mechanism, which was available in 1917 or ’18. Photos from before that were presumably taken by siblings or friends. These photos of Len and Cub belong to a genre that was beautifully illustrated in a recent documentary titled 100 Years of Men in Love: The Accidental Collection , which brings to light a wealth of vintage pictures of “men in love” from the 1850s to the 1950s. They were found at flea markets, in shoe boxes and old suitcases, in family archives, at estate sales, and so on, and were compiled in a book titled Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, 1850–1950 , by Hugh Nini & Neal Treadwell. The 700-plus photos in this collection provide ample evidence for same-sex love over a long stretch of history, but most of the men pictured are nameless and shown in a brief moment in time, often without much context. In contrast, the photos of Len and Cub document a longer-term relationship involving two men whose biographies are fairly well known. Still, nothing lasts forever, and it seems that adage would apply to Len and Cub. Apparently they drifted apart after World War II. Cub got married to a woman shortly before going off to fight and resumed family life upon his return. Less is known about what happened to Len, but there’s evidence that he was outed and ostracized from his village for being gay. Thus Len & Cub offers a glimpse into a relationship that was perhaps fated by the times to be short-lived.

Calendar Girl

In the baked-dust garages & brokensided trucks of this central valley

In time-stopped elder workshops flap those calendars

Twelve months of fruit & cleavage, promised bounty held up by fresh starlets ogling citrus. Orange segments big as boxcars, grapes like chandeliers and offered by a June, a May, I grew in California like a fruit & moved away. We never had those calendars. But now, I’m back transplanted driving the starlit streak of Highway 5, up to Pacheco and thinking of each month I loved some girl. My memory is a harvest. January skies are days I waited for her call, her denim schoolbag March, a frosty date night on her sofa and cherry blossom April, with an April.

first kisses: water, on the windshield, at the falls.

Where are they now?—but I know. Every one. My year of women, seasons full of salt; I’d need a five-year calendar to look at every girl and taste that fruit again when I was ripening, when we were fresh in season, posing, sweet.

B ONNIE J. M ORRIS

Cub and Len at the Keith family cabin in Cranberry, New Brunswick. Photo by Leonard Olive Keith (Len).

November–December 2022

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