Poem of the Week: For Gomez by Stephen Sexton

Happy Halloween from WFU Press! Today, we’re sharing “For Gomez” from Stephen Sexton’s second collection, Cheryl’s Destinies. The poems in this book are perfect for the holiday—from fortune tellers and tarot cards to werewolves and The Smashing Pumpkins. “For Gomez” is, as Sexton notes, “in affectionate memory” of actor Raúl Julia (1940–94), famous for his portrayal of Gomez Addams in the two 1990s Addams Family films. This poem captures the character’s love of death, the macabre, and, equally, his zeal for life and all its pleasures.

For Gomez

it’s waltzes, lovemaking and DEATH
in the mansion by the graveyard
whose mansard roof’s cascading slates
are forces majeures of guillotine

and wrought iron gates wanting oil
are spiked with poignards élégants
where a sentry pair of magpies
is nothing more than sorrow twice.

Knowing here, you know hereafter
is the smolder of Armagnac,
cigars and a smoking jacket,
an odd aristocratic bent;

the old country’s romantic tongues,
marriage’s drawn-out ecstasy:
there’s nothing of oblivion
even cousinly to surprise.

Neither the bats in the belfries
of Castille nor the endless bilk
of the new world’s grand prospectus:
Death is the rightful republic.

What we could learn from you, old man,
in the callithump of living
is to refuse to be subject
to opposing jurisdictions;

to love the house where suffering
is not suffering desire,
whose gates swing open at a thought:
we should never have been strangers.

— Stephen Sexton, from Cheryl’s Destinies (2024)