Anyone's Son

by David Meischen

From the rural South Texas of the nineteen fifties to a desert mesa in New Mexico many years later, Anyone’s Son illuminates the moments of a life animated by the author’s yearning, at its root sexual, for the company of another man. In five sections, each one corresponding to a stage in the life delineated here, the author offers scenes from his childhood on a small farm, as well as moments of conflicted adolescence. He explores unmitigated sexual pleasure, sometimes fraught with anguish and shame. He remembers scenes from marriage and fatherhood, from the wreckage and rebuilding that came at midlife. And finally, glimpses from a second marriage, this time unconflicted, to a man, to the right man. At its heart, Anyone’s Son poses an implicit question: What is identity?

Anyone’s Son is a book of music and memory. In this remarkable first collection David Meischen brings us with him across decades and landscapes, through bedrooms and parked cars, across a life riven through with longing. Queer as every Texas sunset, queer as needing to leave and stay at once. This is a book of opening and unbuttoning. This is a book unzipping its very text so a reader might see the heart throbbing there below the page.
Sam Sax, author of bury it and madness

121 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2020

About the author

David Meischen is the author of Nopalito, Texas: Stories (University of New Mexico Press, 2024) and Caliche Road Poems (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024). Anyone’s Son, from 3: A Taos Press, won Best First Book of Poetry from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2020. A Pushcart honoree, with a personal essay in Pushcart Prize XLII, David is cofounder and Managing Editor of Dos Gatos Press. He lives in Albuquerque, NM with his husband—also his co-publisher and co-editor—Scott Wiggerman.

Reviews

[AJ Lonski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Collection of poetry on the queer experiences of the author throughout their life. Really nice collection :)

[Andrew Neuman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I looked forward to reading Anyone's Son mainly because I expected that it would evoke some memories shared between the author, his first family, and myself. I was not disappointed.

"Self-Portrait as Itinerant Father" brought back familiar memories, tinged with the danger of the mundane such as David experienced when he absentmindedly stepped off of a tractor trailer and fell to the ground, lacerating his skull, his mind elsewhere on other, much deeper preoccupations. Others, such as "Breathing Epinephrine with Jack" brought to my mind's eye the young face of David's second son. I could imagine the young boy's fear as he suffered a severe allergic reaction, an episode of which I was not aware until I read this book. Finally, in "She's Lived to See World Turned Upside Down", I remembered the couple that David and Karen were -- a couple that provided me with a home away from home, a couple that set me on an entirely different trajectory at the beginning of my adult life, a couple that I adored and emulated -- and how that marriage ended. The last line of that poem, "I meant for us to last", was especially poignant.

Highly recommended. I will likely read it several times over to appreciate all of its imagery.

[Scott Wiggerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

First off, a full disclosure: I'm married to the author and had previously read most of the poems in this book. But I hadn't read them in the order they were arranged, nor with the new edits, so it was a surprise and a revelation to make my way through these poems anew. Many excellent poems throughout this book, and the various "Self-Portrait" poems at different stages in the author's life paint a development through a rural, farming life through a urban, literary one--all against the backdrop of a burgeoning acceptance of sexuality and "desire mingling / with something like prayer." One of the most extraordinary first books of poetry I've experienced (even if I am a bit partial)!

[Liza Wolff-Francis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bravo for “Anyone’s Son,” a poetry collection at once daring and tender. Meischen’s poems unfold a lifetime of coming out to be one’s true self in what seems an impossible landscape to do so. In a musicality of language, the reader winds through rural Texas farm life - the biases, the accents, the societal expectations of heteronormativity - on the journey of a gay man toward his own liberation. The characters the speaker encounters are riveting and real, as is the homophobia, the shifting recognitions, the raw sexuality, the lust and longing and love. As Meischen writes “he burns to know if somewhere there are others fed by hungers that cannot be quenched out of deepest dark beneath the nearest hackberry,…” the reader holds tightly to these words, to also have their hungers quenched and to witness the freedom that comes from a person stepping into the power of their true self.

[Cindy Huyser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent debut collection. The poems trace the development of a speaker from boyhood to maturity--from an environment of unquestioned heterosexual expectation in rural south Texas during the 1950s and 1960s through difficult and necessary choices that lead to a claiming of self, a claiming of joy. I found Meischen's treatment of difficult material deft and his formal choices--from Western and Eastern received forms to free verse--quite apt. Definitely worthwhile.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

David is a master poet in line, poem, and the arc of the collection. The poems are intimate and soaked in landscape, anguish, and finally love. I highly recommend David's work. His workshops are excellent.

[Marisol Cortez · Rating 5 out of 5]

poetry of unsung south texas queer desire, flawlessly executed. no word out of place.