RITA

“Why Rita Hayworth?”
—Suzanne Jill Levine
“Puns: The Untranslatable”
The Subversive Muse: Translating 
Latin American Fiction
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When Batista fell—
And Cuba Butched it up

Vast flotillas of drag—
Queens fled, my dear
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Some to NYC—
Others to Miami

Miss Puig did—
The Spider Woman
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Miss Sarduy did—
The Cobra Woman

It was all so—
Latino-esque gay 
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Baroque bricoleur—
Boys in the Band

Homo homage—
Burlesque subversive
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Carried away, honey—
So Caravaggesque

Satirical burlesque—
Chiaroscuro Camp
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Macaronic mariconettes—
Queer iconographies

Miss gay Metonymy—
Meets Fag Grotesque
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So let’s do Drag—
But not overdo it, dears

Some voodoo Abracadabra—
A little rococo Swish
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It’s so tres grammatical—
Madame Onomatopoeia 

Those Dwarf gigolos—
So trashy transvestite

Contessa this and—
The Contessa that
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Senora and Senoritas—
Our Ladies of Guadalupe

Precocious and Presumptuous—
So Elegant yet so Vulgar
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Such Recherché here—
Such Pomposity there

Nothing like Miss Velázquez—
To Hapsburg camp it up
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Tacky Translations—
Quickening Castanets

Daring Defilements—
Dumas-esque Melodramatics
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Miss Musketeers—
Seminal Swordsmanship

Touché Avant-garde—
Miss Breton so very touchy
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Euphuistic Homoeroticism—
Such Eager Euphemisms

Swinging Swinburne Swine—
Pouty Venuses in the Pigsty

TYRONE POWER

Young Tyrone Power—
Naked in the moonlight

Nothing but a cape—
There in the bullring
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Cute macho kid—
His strong uncut sword

Soon becoming Spain’s—
New romantic matador
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But Rita Hayworth—
Seduces young Tyrone

He becomes the Bull—
Betrayed by her guitar

BLOOD AND SAND

But why Rita Hayworth—
Who in it she betrays?

Tyrone Power, of course—
And his loving faithful wife
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But Rita Hayworth—
Betrays herself most of all

She’s really Margarita Cassino—
Daughter of a Spanish dancer
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Are we moviegoers betrayed—
By Tyrone’s infidelities?

Hardly, my dears, don’t be naive—
We’d like to suck off Tyrone too

RITA HAYWORTH

The pretty wicked Actress—
Rita’s power to castrate men

Patriarchal powerless—
Male Victimhood so appealing
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So that Manuel Puig learns—
To play the Betrayal Game

Manipulator of Words—
And fictional Realities
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Heterosexuality Betrayed—
Empowering queer Miss Puig

Hollywood popular flicks—
Making gay Latino possible

BETRAYED BY RITA HAYWORTH

“The chiaroscuro technique”
—Suzanne Jill Levine
“Between Textures: Petit Ensemble 
Caravaggesque,” The Subversive Muse: 
Translating Latin American Fiction
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The betrayer in betrayed—
I know it happened to me

Like Berto’s unsent letter—
I have a confession to make
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I was in love with my young—
Kid brother when we grew up

He felt betrayed by me—
Being his fag cocksucking brother
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Queer for his precocious penis—
Betraying him with my queer lips

I betrayed myself just like Rita—
Down there on my bruised knees
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Baroque Bricoleur Boyfriends—
Caravaggesque Petit Pricks