Devour Me Again - The Poems of Bambi Lake

A landmark collection of poems by Bambi Lake, the beloved (and bad-mouthed) icon of San Francisco’s counterculture.

Bambi Lake was a trans chanteuse performer, provocateur, and countercultural darling of the ‘70s, and subsequent decades. “The Glamorous Life follows me around,” she wrote, and sang about in her ballad “The Golden Age of Hustlers” (later popularized by Justin Vivian Bond). Her life in San Francisco—including stints in the Cockettes and the Angels of Light—was “sort of legendary,” sort of “sweet, sticky, nasty,” and always precarious, lived in spite of addiction, homelessness, and the horrors that came from chasing, and surviving, her own dreams.

Here are her poems, long out of print, that wear “burgundy velvet jezebel bras” to seduce “fatally hetero” men, chronicling the macabre cabaret of desire amidst social, cultural, and political change. “I am Beauty,” she writes, “and the world dissolves.”

The collection includes a series of interviews by August Bernadicou, and a foreword by Brontez Purnell.

About the author

August Bernadicou is the Executive Director of The LGBTQ History Project, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the lives and legacies of LGBTQ activists from the first wave of gay liberation.

Product details

• Authors: Lake Bambi
• Assisted by: August Bernadicou (Editor), Brontez Purnell (Foreword)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 02.06.2026
• EAN: 9781643623061
• ISBN: 978-1-64362-306-1
• No. of pages: 128
• Illustrations: photos of Bambi Lake
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political theories and the history of ideas; Poetry, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Love & Erotica, Of specific Gay & Lesbian interest, Political activism, POETRY / LGBTQ+, Political activism / Political engagement, POETRY / Subjects & Themes / Political & Protest, Relating to LGBTQIA+ people, Poetry / Poems