6.13 / Queer Two

As I looked back over the pieces I chose to include in this year’s Queer issue, I was struck by how engaged many of them are with the body and its surfaces, the body and its orifices, the body and its functions, the body and its fluids.

I am not… A)  Black. B)  Good at Donkey Kong. C)  Living at the Argyle Hotel any longer. D)  A stick like my sixteen year old brother, Timmy. E)  Jewish. F)  Afraid of Gargamel. G)  Sure if I’ll find any cool friends around here. I’m Philip Winston.  I’m almost ten.

start with the t no the s the s comes first but maybe the s i cant start anywhere because it feels-is someone looking over my shoulder? this is not the real thing. this is just the warm up.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Wong.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Keep me clean – that microbial oval toilet seat, overused, turned ivory with occasional drips of yellow, a Jackson Pollack on periphery. * Keep me sanitized – says a sign – laminated with ripped corners, narrating how to spread sterilizer evenly around the curve.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Lirette.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] In one story, the two sisters were Shel Silverstein and they wrote a book about a Giving Tree, which was the old man they were both in love with.

Pussy Fucking Fingernails [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Nails.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] My nails were no longer pussy fucking nails, so I bit them off. Then I put on red lipstick. I shaved just one side of my head and let my hair down.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Kearnes.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] Luke stares into the lot through my bedroom blinds, telling me Ted will track his ass down. Must be good to know some man wants you bad enough, you feel the thirst thirty miles north. Thank the good and wonderful Jesus I’m so fucking plain.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Kapetyn.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] he has a wide body. it could crush an elephant. i’m 42. he had the need to reveal his age. his hair is thinning. he sells commercial real estate. it is interesting talking to a man you know can kill you with his hands.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Crane.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] (1993-1994 San Francisco) “I look at you, I am unable to stir, I struggle, I am unable to reach you monster.” -Monique Wittig Bianca was a dapper girl-boy: tall and lean with fine brown hair and Colorado snow skin.

115 Joe’s death may have dashed the party, but the cast at last begins to act. 116 “You’re a sucker for punishment,” Stella says to Rossi. So am I. 117 John Kerr’s hotness is seriously undermined by his goofy grin. 118 “Look,” snaps Rod, “I signed a statement. End of sonnet.” End of haiku, too.

Kidd_O posted at 19-11-2008 01:16 I am a pengkid. My age is 21 now but I have been this way since I was 12. At first, I was just a tomboy but since I started working three years ago, I met Juli (not her real name, of course), my sweet, beautiful girl.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Pico.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] I really want some smoked brisket on the stroll. Some soul watering pulled pork tacos, BBQ beef sandwich, a Frito pie from Stubb’s, meat sticks on the street corners, deep fried skins with melted cheese and chili, grilled stuff from the food trucks.

And what are the Adventures the Cases the Studies if not love letters if not odes to his remarkable friend his extraordinary friend his wise friend Holmes and what is Dr. John H.

items will have shifted my eardrums pop whilst my solar plexus aches w/emergency situations.      i am chewing tobacco + finding all these dead pigeons in yr travel- sized dead pigeon carrying case. the flight attendant squiggles at us- but you are too busy trying to make me feel boring.

Age matters little for immortals. When I met Dionysus, I was twenty-four. She was old. We met at an after-hours club. She caught my eye or I caught hers. Her eyes were glittery and wise. She came over and laughed. I felt good.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Helms.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] John’s body splits open when I squeeze him too hard. I stitch ceremoniously and he watches me work. He asks if I remember how we used to live in our house and sleep in our bed and never worry all the time about his body splitting open.

Dear secondary umbilical, A slowly opening camber for the zygote that is also the antiquity.

I tell my grandmother I’m gay, and she tells me I’ll live a lonely life if I don’t get out of town.

Ben used to call me only late at night, blurry drunk, too drunk to go home but not so drunk that he couldn’t operate a phone if he had one eye closed and said the number over and over. I don’t know how he managed to always remember my number.

Gertrude Stein’s Objects Nancy Opposes Gertrude EVERYTHING ORDINARY. A fact a single fact was certain. Then the said did fall and where was a fence inside it, then outside was sent out and here people stayed when doubtfully nothing was lowdown. It was frivolous. A SAID SUN.

THE ARROGANT MAN (MY MAN) [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Feldman1.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] In which it was half habit then half necessity to crowd the middle: the tent walls brayed in the wind. In which I believed we’d staked everything down or if not locked half in the trunk. In which we collided in half sleep.

Poem for the Apocalypse [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Crandall.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Emslie.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] I still hate the song. He fucked me on the comedown from his Boston ‘e’ party, quick and neat as a well-done execution. His young stubble grazed my shoulder, he feigned sleep when someone knuckled his door.

Amie [wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Amie.mp3″ text=”listen to this poem” dl=”0″] Clotilde found me in the hayloft, sticking straws under my nails. She saw where I’d scratched a broken cross on my wrist where veins sketch a blue delta. And she shrieked, the cuts smeared with blood.

1. Into and entered I bend, just-discernible shape. Features something to comment on: eyes small, small nose, the mole on the left breast. Was a body. 2. Streetlights trembled as we marched back the night trembled! we were so fucking fierce. But couldn’t shake my traitorous yearning for pink eyelet smock.

[wpaudio url=”/audio/6_13/Atwater.mp3″ text=”listen to this story” dl=”0″] We settle at the bar, our eyes hooded, hard-ons rising behind suit coats.  A shot a Johnnie, we say to the barkeep.  We’re sweating.  We’d stopped to admire half-slips made of lace on plastic male torsos at Slipwreak.