And all of this was meant to be beneath me

textual

Hank 3

Listening to far too much Hank 3 today. He makes me smile and bounce.

What could be better.

Tags: /rock and fucking roll

textual

Kevin A. González, from "Cultural Strumpet"

Via airwalker:

Years later, all the English girls you loved
are calling & e-mailing
because they’re going out of town
with their new boyfriends
& need you to feed their cats.
Remember me? said the literary theorist
who called orgasms little deaths,
as if you could forget the way she yelled
You’re killing me! You’re killing me!
& campus police banging on the door
& questioning you when you answered
wrapped in her sheets. Then,

there was the girl from poetry workshop
whose room was full of stuffed animals
named after contemporary poets:
a lion named Komunyakaa, a shark named
Jorie Graham; the leopard, Denise Duhamel,
cuddling with the panda, Nick Carbó.

There was the visiting poet—
how you lay together
like syllables in an iamb,
how she was the stressed one,
& how when the girl from workshop
found out, you had to return
the stuffed owl named Harold Bloom
she gave you for your birthday.

Of course, there was the wannabe-novelist
who left you for the almost-doctor
because poets have small & selfish penises,
especially you. There was the Lit Crit chick
who said your poems
were too self-conscious, who argued
that stubbornism was a word,
& so you left her, though she claims
she left you first. Feed Blossom
half a can of wet food, her e-mail said,
& enough dry food to last through the night.
The key is in a ziplock beneath the hyacinths.
You replied that you were gone, not that it mattered
because you have no idea what hyacinths are.

After you dropped the visiting poet off
at the airport, she called from the plane
& requested you write a poem
entitled “Use Bottom Cushion
for Flotation,” & you wrote, There is
a small man drowning inside me—
the supple syllable of water so eternal
I’m afraid of mistaking it for silence.

And you meant it too. Because
they did not love you;
because you’re still licking your fingers
that have long lost the taste of their skin.
After all those little deaths, how much life
still remains? There are eight
different types of darkness
beneath any given comforter.

When you come home, the machine
winks with a message:
O Cultural Strumpet! they all say
at the same time. Feed my cat!

Tags: /poetry

Reblogged

textual

Then, now, tomorrow

Partly
We said
Because of all the good things
Partly
We said
Because we had no choice

If we lack free will
We said
We’re glad that this is what’s fated
If we’re forever still
We said
We’re spoken in forever’s voice

Tags: /poetry /pure cheese /SAP