Hustle Rave XXX
We got an email from Charlie Vázquez about a new book of poems he and David Caleb Acevedo (San Juan, PR) have collaborated on about male street hustlers. “These 48 poems take a closer and bolder look at the ages old relationship between older men who seek youthful beauty and the young men that offer it to them for a price.”
I was fascinated to learn in the intro that David Caleb Acevedo worked for a period in 2003 as a rent boy, in Puerto Rico, near the Gándara Bridge in Río Piedras, on a street known as “hustler street.” Some of the poems reflect his own experiences while others “showcase male and transgender sex workers from Greek antiquity to the contemporary streets of New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hartford, CT, Portland, OR, Seattle, Tijuana, MX, Vancouver BC, San Francisco and beyond.”
Many of the poems made me feel a mixture of both sadness and arousal—it was very conflicting. Thinking I would only skim through it, once I started I couldn’t stop. It was a powerful, engrossing, hot read. —TOM
Lethe Press