Red

Lesbian, gay and queer life in Provincetown, Mass., and family life all over America find an ebullient and very believable voice in the long-lined, often memoiristic, poems of Melanie Braverman's Red. ""Gay"" begins, disarmingly and charmingly, ""Is this why I like girls?"" Other poems use beach, ocean, whales and sand dunes as spiritual symbols, while ""What I Want"" (one of several poems to chronicle a P-town scene) features Pauline who ""used to sleep/ with girls, but last year some guy on an island did her and now/ she's on the bocce court with a daughter.../ I have a waitress dress I wear for kicks when I go out.""