Junk
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Frenching with a mouthful of M&M’s dunno if I feel polluted
or into it—the lights go low across the multiplex Temple of
canoodling and Junk food A collision of corn dog bites and
chunky salsa to achieve a spiritual escape velocity Why am I in
this cup holder? B/c yr bubbly, dummy But I feel squeeze cheese
uneasy In Faggotland coupling is at best delicate precarious &
rarefied Eggshells At worst, a snipe hunt Love in the time of
climate change Should I be nervous? No, it’s too dark in here
for that There’s light and a screen & our moon faces, reflecting
This is an epic, dummy Get yr muse Hail Janet Jackson, patron
saint of Eternal Utility but Selective Relevance I whisper Feedback,
feedback into the bedding Usually when you gag it’s bc
something needs to come out So it strikes me as funny ha ha
funny to gag while trying to stuff someone’s whole Junk in
Everything that can cross I am crossing: eyes arms shoulders
Back to bed, come back here The air is heavy feathers in midsummer,
literally and metaphorically in my foul apt above the
chicken slaughterhouse where we wheeze awake Yr bangs look
real perf n coiffed n strangely I smell like horror burgers n you
smell like lavender doves and all the best stuff Yr comforting,
like getting fucked on an empty stomach Funny but a lil obvious
like a wrecking ball factory going out of business I feel held up,
like yr examining my x-rays and nothing’s broken I’m like why
does this meaty yuppie man want me to wake up in his arms
but Janet says leave yr worries behind I’m trying to close my
eyes I’m trying to close my eyes I’m tryin to close my Shudder
yr forehead against mine tectonic San Andreas in the West
Village karaoke piano gay bar whatever I still can’t close my
eyes I just spent $13 dollars on this margarita Black Velvet is
loud and extra theater kid in the world around us This is where
you come to lose yrself and This is where I feel extra jagged
Junk not immediately useful but I’m still someone I can’t stop
lookin at ppl’s Junk generally so u can imagine how hard it is
at the gym I try to keep eye contact but yr orbs soft n breathless
glow their orblight all over me—we’re seeing subarctic
farming in Alaska for the first time Green in the hazel country:
that’s what I’d call the color of yr eyes Squeeze an hour before
my weekend in Philly just to chill n make out wink-wink and
get yelled at by a jerk squad cruising past us in a royal blue rust
bucket in Queens n thinkin about you brings a rush of warmth
like a stiff drink Settles over my rocky butte Interest sparked
like a neon pink band sweatshirt A tabby-fat heart I’m a brick
in stadium lights like so fantastically broken but I’m gummy-
peachy keen Junk gets a bad rap because capitalism Junk isn’t
garbage It’s not outlived its purpose—Junk awaits its next life
Google viral vs bacterial, then try to sleep I had a tweet once
called “Netflix & Pills” that went sort of viral and you said you
were in a viral video dancing on a patio with a group of gay
norms (of course) on Fire Island (of course) in a thong (of
course) and it made me want to punch a pigeon Ppl buck like
fuck when they feel their self-esteem is under siege Shame is
isolating I write “very specific baths” What kind of grey scrutiny
do you cast into the mirror? And if being pinned down by light,
the squirming My roommate found an unused juicer at his job
Two story thrift store between a methadone clinic and wild
mushroom truffle oil chicken tikka masala pizza In common
thrift store parlance, black leather vegans—as in the verb to
become vegan—if it’s a gift My first question is “can you put ice
cream in that and still call it juice?” I unzip yr pants with my
teeth in the denim jacket afternoon and I’m as surprised as you
Hoover maneuvers The benefit of sober knob-slobbing Bottom
lip only bleeds a little bit and it’s hard to imagine zippers do
much else but reveal yr Junk Cookie dough brownie vanilla
frozen yogurt swirl wipe Whenever we finish n I stare directly
at you, you act like I spilled something Jump up as if to get a
paper towel and hang in the kitchen evading my peepers Is this
what you’d call “Hart Crane-ing” Is saying “goose flesh” instead
of “goose bumps” evil incarnate Is it wrong 2 call yr partner a
mirror in the sense that when we’re together I’m with myself
in a way I can’t escape A train whistles in the distance I court
containment An octopus hugged in a box but you say being seen
is a prison We’re buffering pretty hard all over each other I am
face 2 face with the perfectly tweezed eyebrows of anxiety You
can’t curate yrself with abandon Read: to look at carefully The
covers up to our shoulders we lie in the couchbed of our
preconceptions, separating I steady walk back to the land
where I dunno u Took you long fuckin enough Now I’m stupid
and sugar-free and frothing The only thing harder than writing
is quitting candy And the only thing harder than quitting candy
is walking all day and buttering into bed in my body Now that
I’m fully inhabiting my cement maybe I’m closer to the sacral
joy of thinking into my ribcage? Convention says a book shd be
this long but I’m only interested in writing as long as you want
to read in one sitting My aura is a strawberry shortcake dessert
bar and the popular American corn snack Funyuns My safe
word is Go to hell Katy Perry pronounced “Catty” I’m writing a
sitcom about butts and counting called Number Two The tagline
is “turn the other cheek” Most times I’m a maniac, other
times losing an arm wrestling match Sitting for longer and
longer but paying less and less attention, evolutionarily Is a
load easier to swallow with a “we” We’ve known for centuries
that time is a bossy bird curdler Protrude from the green and
calling it “bud” Sometimes you need to read something more
than once My co-pilot is Mary Jane The theme is harmony of
a gradient Let’s hold hands and walk to the water taxi in
matching tank tops but we call the tank tops “wedges” and the
wedges are a Chipwich and our Cherry Cokes are a summer
afternoon where we can’t do anything but lean into the grass
at that carousel park in Dumbo with the lap of the river and
the dollhouse of lower Manhattan face-fucking us while we
neck and, later, face-fuck The days are burnt packets of fake
sugar in Faggotland and Sundays are the blurry worst I’m
takin notes in therapy like “be more in the moment” Everyone,
they say, is trying to quiet the buzz but here in the white waves
in the ring of yr absence I chafe to chatter Leap into a scream
of swans rubbing their swan cocks against the water’s ass
Starving Junk in the sticky soda of my boy me
at Spit on that
rock hard narrative make it glisten fuck oh fuck My head a
rabid Sega frantic 16-bit divination My hands huge Venn
diagrams: the middle is where I miss you filling me Honey, in
the raw It’s odd to feel someone slip away drilling their Junk
inside you The sky is still and shy and surfing News Flash—
Predictions are insecure but here r the rainbow road’s possible
paths: Cum delta Choke my loneliness daddy More graphics
more resolution more jagged chin cliffs more anarchist sex
dolls more jewel teeth more tears on the pizza more hungry
boy somewhere in the noise machine The fat Junk wags against
my throat Junk is charming in the hallows Dude leans into me
like cigs half asleep you know how some ppl are workaholics
Well I’m an alcoholic Today’s jaw lick click clocks sops the
syrup leaking from my mores I mean pores One more time
plz can I ride plz just one more time I have the tightest pinkest
purse Sorry clutch Let’s play a game called sociopath, or
gay man Let’s bottomless brunch Let’s Let’s Let’s petal bagel
w/ strawberry tofu cream cheese toasted snickerdoodle
smoothie fuchsia purée adrenaline hole bellinis I’ll eat it daddy
baby I’m the opposite of a foodie I’m like a junkie Don’t blame
the Junk for being discarded Hey do you do you remember in
the free-from-winter but not-quite-spring after poet’s brunch
with Molly Amy Chelsea and Sarah Jean we went traipsing thru
slushy Williamsburg and wound up at that store Junk where u
bought all those old matchbooks for a “living room conversation
piece” I grabbed a June Jordan near the door as we entered the
labyrinth and read random gripping lines while you lifted dusty
old china wiry broken radios n hopeful cassettes We got to the
counter you took the book from me tossed it with the matches
and said “my treat” Well I told u I’d write it into something I am
in the Junk shop of my 30s A weird thing happens when u enter:
nothing You look up to a sea of button ups and cuffed jeans and
casual pomade flip-dos Objectively, my father is a tribal chairman
and I’m his speech writer I started one on the back of a bill
for therapy where Dr. John tells me Go with the first glass pearl
or arrowhead or whatever Says I can’t be wrong I like to read
poems one at a time Word for word at first Try to strip them
and see their bones before, eventually dressing them in my
clothes Smellin of my orange Hermes toilet water and then
BOOM June Jordan reminds me to call my mother Receive the
beached bottle Crash it against some pop rocks So dizzy I swear
to god I’d smash my face against the mirror if I wasn’t on my
way to Shake Shack again OK so then finally I write my version
of the poem Replacing the unimportant gods w/ peanut butter
cookies and “Apollo” with “Shake Shack” or “fracking” which
my mom says caused another earthquake in Oklahoma n nearly
reaches the end of her sentence b4 breaking into the chorus
from “New York, New York” Apollo is just a cracked statue &
we’re moving on to the wildfires in Indonesia Bobby Flay’s
rum punch Whoever thought up heaven must also think we’re
really gullible These days no one can stand up in a movie
theater w/o me thinkin it’s all over White men open fire My
brain is a kiddie pool filled with pinwheels & Oreo dust Ppl are
too busy callin themselves “poets” to notice the canary died I
have only ever gotten better at being my color, w/ the banded
lines and the tremors and the blues The smell of pumpkin pie
cooling Chomping thru a whole baked brie wheel We go deep
& we don’t get no sleep Everyone is reading The Life-Changing
Magic of Tidying Up—basically an anti-junk manifesto but it
has a point You should be accountable to what you touch The
sound of Styrofoam rubbing on Styrofoam Is it possible to
manifest desire I mean to consider yrself fly as fuck without
another’s recognition Touch all this Junk Are hands made for
anything but touchin yr body, is a ponder for almost every
Janet jam Consumed with being “acceptable” Dummy, that’s
never been in yr vocabulary Yr thinking of “exceptional,” duh It’s
cool, they sound similar The older I get the more people move
to the city turn 26 fascinated by the wacky G train Holy shit,
the birthday boy just puked The JMZ grinds its wheel teeth
behind you Embarrassment is so scalding sometimes in a
February freeze I remember the night you vomited on me after
we’d made out just to warm up Self-hatred is a sweltering
disease not cured by living in the pathogens at a mustache
party The chunks dribble down yr glued-on Fu Manchu There
is a kind of waltz to being that drunk But I’m getting into hero
territory Everything new is just something to forget unless you
still have the mustache to prove it San Loco’s “surprisingly
addictive” sangria Terracotta breaking The engine of capitalism:
dope, dicks, misc bullshit Junk is its accumulation Not as
indistinct as “thing” not as dramatic as “trash” It’s important
to value the Junk, Junk has the best stories Custard is like the
most disgusting word I thought the point of seeing each other
was to see each other How is being seen by me a bad thing?
Dudes shd talk less generally and def talk less about music Yr
reputation recedes you I call it aggressive mediocrity “Comfort”
food is a perky euphemism “Oblivion” food may be a touch too
negs Why aren’t more things horchata I can’t see exactly where
the binder clips begin and the half used Best Buy gift cards end
Is it that sight is possessive? The way “to see” is also to
apprehend? It can’t be that sight is isolating It’s like taking a dip
With the water on all ends you are suddenly your whole entire
skin The only thing funner than a Junk shop is wig shopping
Wigs are possibly the only thing I’d find suspect at the Junk
shop It’s hard to trust an old wig Day 17: I found freshwater
and food The water was in a fountain at the gym The food was
in a protein shake container, also at the gym Sadness makes me
punchy, but I’m a lover A boy w/ the clear skin of a plant-based
diet and whose sharp edges put the pro in protein has started
saying what’s up to me in the locker room I’ve always wondered
why ppl use religion to justify their prejudices cos shouldn’t yr
religion be challenging you to undo them? And then I meet gym
ppl and I’m like eyeroll Maybe religion is just a place where ppl
fortify their fears I look at him then look at me in disbelief He’s
like the morning and I’m like crud underneath a toenail My
stupid waterbed body Shame is such a shutdown sucking feta
from an olive’s soul Oh he def has an edible butt says someone
out of the void which means some butts are edible and some
butts are inedible Incredible Do I have an edible butt Edible
butt Edible butt That’s pardon the expression bullshit Edible is
the birthright of all butts I hat
e gay guys so much There’s this
idea that only some bodies are worthy of desire and the others
don’t even exist And from the guts of my anger, this glowing I
dunno I’ve stopped counting the days The anger snowdrifts So
many ways of seeing that reveal and when the anger gets
replaced by empathy and I feel you, it’s almost sad—letting go
of our hazel country The impotence of Junk Birthday cake
scented candle The bartender getting too drunk on 5 dollar
margarita cheeseburger happy hour Sirens call attention
toward tragedy Land is the trauma of lava The islands
squeezing from the deep Fall came quick Beirut Baghdad Paris
Mizzou Yemen Turkey Niger Calais Allepo Egypt Chicago
Indonesia Radiation from Fukushima is in fact all over the
Pacific Open carry men show up at protests An Arab guy in
Astoria beaten in his bodega by white ppl tellin him Go Home