Jacques J. Rancourt’s new chapbook In the Time of PrEP (Beloit Poetry Journal, 2018) is a stunning exploration of what it means to live as a queer man today “on the other side of catastrophe,” a generation after the AIDS crisis.
Before he is dead, Grandad misses his funeral. The ceremony is supposed to be Thursday, has been Thursday for weeks. But Grandad doesn’t die on time. He doesn’t do anything on time, hasn’t done anything right for a while now, so he misses the funeral and drinks red Gatorade with what’s supposed to be his final meal.
The raw energy within the novel is uncontaminated, fierce, and dedicated toward a singular purpose: to peel back the reader’s eyes and force them to bear witness to the plight of America’s original inhabitants, lest we forget that non-natives are but immigrants or the descendants of immigrants to this country.
“I don’t have much interest in formula fiction. I have a lot of interest in using the fantastic in all its ways to illuminate.”
The magic of apricot may well keep us alive
a little while longer than unnecessary
