There’s been some conversation over on SLOG today that the author of those threatening letters to gay bars in Seattle might actually be a gay man himself.  I wasn’t convinced, until I saw this…

Good Work, Sloggers

Posted by Dan Savage on Wed, Jan 7 at 12:31 PM

Remix in comments flagged an important clue about the author of the Ricin Letters. The line…

…is from a poem, "A Display of Mackerel", from a collection by poet Mark Doty. The poem appeared in Atlantis, a 1996 collection of poems that Doty wrote after the HIV-related death of his partner in 1994.

They don’t care they’re dead
and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,
they didn’t care that they were living:

So whoever wrote the letter knows—and plagiarizes—his gay poets.

That’s…pretty telling.  It’s not conclusive, but I’m not making any more assumptions about this guy until he’s caught.  Let’s hope that happens before he actually kills someone…