Balcony in Waynesville

An American flag, flying proud and arrogant in the name of

righteousness hung above the doorway—

Cole and I were laved by the morning sunlight,

capitulating shamelessly to our carnal desires.

Fornicating as though we were mongrels,

so far from grace,

bereft of patriotism.

I was contorted over a

wicker patio ottoman that pierced my skin

like kneeling on dry grits as punishment,

our landlord was mowing the grass

some ten feet below, oblivious to the nude

boy watching him through gaps in the railing.

This was the first time I’d ever peered over the

edge of a balcony without thinking of

jumping.

Earlier that day, we drove through Xenia

in Cole’s Chevy Silverado—

living out a Harmony Korine film;

an unblemished marble statue of Aphrodite

stood tall in some abandoned scrap yard—

I wondered if all the resident fentanyl addicts

would still languish in the streets or

their boarded up homes

if the goddess was liberated

from her chain link prison.

I held my breath as we passed by endless

fast food establishments—they might as well have

been cemeteries—

we talked about hunting

down the sick fucks that put Cole on

the sex offender registry, but even that

would be unfulfilling because the damage

is already done:

A charcoal black mark

that follows him wherever he goes,

and six months served in Warren county jail.

His family never visited, but he still mows

his mother’s lawn.

He groaned when he was finished with me, as if to forsake

Jesus and

the machine parts he coats via thermal spray for a living;

the silence that followed was soon consumed

by the birds and the crickets

and the semi trucks rolling down Route 42,

by six string serenades from my other lovers

that will haunt his waking dreams.

In the dead of night we cast our lines

out into the water with hopes of catching

channel catfish. Some are overly voracious:

they swallow the gas station night crawlers whole,

and inevitably, the hooks as well;

we leave them to die on the water's edge—

croaking in distress, gasping for air—

it is more humane this way.

63 Powers St.

Jagged husks of pearlless oysters

gleam opalescent and red as they exsanguinate my body—

a burden I must carry backside as a result of starvation from desire.

The gouging feeling is what fuels my addiction:

the kind that begins in bedrooms

and twists itself

to end up in church parking lots or empty fields or

cellars,

lined floor to ceiling with rusted kennels,

occupied by boys and elderly hounds who have

given up on whining.

We are still ecstatic when greeted by our cruel master.

You are heading to your fourth date this week

subsisting on free dinners in exchange for sex

from unsuspecting men in their late thirties

who have realized that their appeal is waning.

The trees in the Bushwick housing project courtyard

crane away from the buildings—

revolted by their bleakness;

A black cat scampers across Moore and Humboldt,

street lamps are the only beacon guiding you

in a sea of moral iniquity.

You talk to the socialist about the economic calculation problem

You talk to the sports enthusiast about the exasperating reality of being a Mets fan

You talk to the hedge fund manager about asset backed securities

You talk to the construction worker about the state of his union or bass fishing or why he thinks

that his sexuality is none of his parent’s business.

I’m the type of person to fall in love with a prison pen pal, you tell them.

sports bar, fly trap

I watch as insects make their way into the bar:

frail wings buzz and flitter—

at first there are only a few,

then, a low droning noise emanating

from the swarm can be heard.

—I brace myself

for its dissonant chorus

whose sole melody is one of malaise.

And it is only early noon…

Disillusioned wives and

naive children wait at home

forgotten while

these feeble creatures race

to the sucrose fluid

that awaits them in bottomless kegs.

Extending their proboscises, they gorge themselves

ignorant to the poison that laces

every drop.

Slowly suffocating,

submerging deeper

and deeper,

shallow conversation

struggles to bail out the pain.

I long to know if they stay trapped forever—

too tired to leave,

or if they are already dead

upon the moment they fly in;

as if I am any better off,

when it is my hand

that pours their drinks.

martyr

Yesterday, though it could have been years ago, I was sitting

in the parking lot waiting for something to happen.

The days I’m not scheduled for work will always feel like

drinking at a townie bar for the first time in an inexplicable way.

Hoping for the final angel to sound the seventh trumpet

because there is nothing better to do.

I decided I’d have sex with the man who emerged from the post office.

The years are known to be malignant and unyielding.

It is morning now and I find myself in bed

clinging to a hayfarmer

with unsightly yellow teeth and halitosis

pretending I cannot see the earth packed deep beneath his fingernails

or the melanomas nascent on his leathered neck—

ignoring these truths in favor of a muscular body.

He doesn’t want to leave.

If only my father could have held me like this when

I was just born—

he was stationed in Bavaria during the cold war

and that stuck with him.

He tried when I was older but it felt like molestation

and I squirmed.

My lungs have been caught in a vice since then,

sprinting a paltry forty yards is a losing war with oxygen.

III

I am eight years old and thinking about going to heaven:

I’ll be ice fishing with my grandfather on lake Ontario,

and all of the dead perch will go to waste because it is

heaven and there is no need for consumption,

there is no need for fish to die at all:

their perishing act is a simulation intended to satisfy man’s earthly sensibilities,

just as the seasons would be, and consequently,

the auger we used to bore a hole into the water—

which itself is meaningless in the land where

thirst is never known.

Your father’s backyard:

You and your brothers play games of catch

in an above ground swimming pool,

A doltish, unthinking clan of people.

Sweat is pouring, my mind stirs

It is the fourth of july, and your birthday all at once,

so I am wearing the American flag bikini

you bought for me half jokingly.

And the women, your sisters and I,

we were basking on chaise lounge chairs

speaking of inconsequential matters—

their children and the like,

which are nowhere to be seen.

I close my eyes.

You are holding my head under

the water

my shrieking is muffled and I trash

uncontrollably.

Now, they have all gotten up—disappeared inside.

I imagine them to be gossiping in the kitchen:

Whispering that I look like a whore,

that I don’t know the world of hurt I am in for

because you have always been a dangerous man.

But I would be lying If I said I didn’t see the way you look at me

like I am a girl and not a woman.

How you watched me back when I was eighteen,

and it is the same way you are gazing longingly at me now:

with thirst and with filth.

It is these torrid summer days

when your hands crave brutality,

and I crave brutalization…

Notes about René

René came from Lake Luzerne—

asbestos packed under his fingernails;

electricians like him are unphased by their scarred sepia lungs.

This was a quick one:

He was supposed to be picking

his oldest son up from baseball practice—

a dirty blonde, plump lipped boy like myself.

I lazed in the torrid bedroom, sweat running

from my temples as he wheezed into the sink,

and his slack belt buckle clanged against its porcelain rim.

René often shows up unannounced.

He speeds to my house on impulse—

before the doubt or guilt has time

to find his beautiful, perverse head—

which he first reared in my vicinity

weeks after divorcing his wife last January.

In the haze of July, he had a psychotic break

and changed his name to Joseph Warren,

and took a greyhound to New York City.

He wants it to be just like the 90’s:

when he saw Pearl Jam at Lollapalooza

and he moshed in bliss with all the other boys

and wasn’t living with the notion

that he has wasted the rest of his life in the closet—

calling up adolescents for sex

in the

crushing hours of the

starless nights.

Swan Song

I was a thing of beauty—

austere and mute,

gliding effortlessly across brackish

inlets of the Long Island sound,

nearly certain I was above it all:

my pallid feathers dragging against

oil-slick, adulterated currents

only upon gravity’s insistence—

even the purest snow must degrade itself

with the thawing, bemired earth.

how I pruned my plumage endlessly

to escape such filth

In those times,

I refused to let others enmesh themselves

with my body—

snapping,

hissing,

if they were to get too close.

The way I roamed the earth without submission

was all spite and no mercy—

flaunting,

just asking

for my delicate neck

to be

wrung.

As though born from midnight itself,

feathers of ink undeafened

the hush that reared me.

The rape was silent for the sake of stealth

yet the scorching

blood that poured

out of me

upon my deflowering,

singed louder than gunfire.

Sinking deep within my downs

I plucked these crimson feathers—

but from raw,

newly barren flesh,

only befouled

scarlet emerged.

I knew then that I was forever tainted

Come nightfall, I search

for debauched,

marauding swans

to inflict such

transgressions on me

once more:

Praying,

that if it happens over and

over again,

perhaps a time will arrive

where it does not hurt,

where I will gain the upper hand,

where I will bask in some twisted pleasure

and the night will know my name.

Venlafaxine

Take the wan complexion of a sullen boy

rupturing from within:

slowly subdue it—

chasten it

with cruel,

complementary tones of violet

and cadmium yellow.

Claim that such contusions are the fault of platelets

devoid of serotonin.

In this deterioration,

the love that

he receives is rendered invalid—

even anxiety is carried away and marred.

In this dementia,

the torturous isolation of youth

shoves its way to the forefront,

pleading

to be alleviated,

avenged in a twisted way.

From the fertile remnants of a brilliant mind—

lust blooms.

Now he is willing to trawl

the sewers of mankind to get hold of

putrescent men fiending to entertain him.

And with the ingestion of semen in all orifices,

he convinces himself

that these were the types

of men he has always craved.

His own ejaculation varnishes

his ribs,

barely glistening in the tenebrous

cage

of a dark room,

as whatever

faceless entity

can be heard

tenderly

pressing the front door

shut—

the sound of the latch clicking

into the strike plate

in place of a goodbye.

Bottom Feeders

His mouth is eager to please:

wet, and glistening with saliva

from a stranger’s tongue

that is aroused

by the knowledge that his maroon lips cannot say no.

The ass of a pornstar, but you wouldn’t know it—

covered in bite marks and bruises,

used until it’s painless

by the long-haul truckers

who are unaware of their own cruelty.

And cornflower eyes that would’ve gleamed

on milk cartons

if they were born three decades earlier—

as though they belonged there.

There's no concern for his own safety

when he hops into the cab of an eighteen wheeler down in Mobile,

and his blonde hair flutters in the wind

blustering in through the open window.

His nose largely goes without remarks,

pinched and soured while it is driven

though cattle country.

With a heart that falls for the natural born losers

who feed on his intestines—

filled with the remains of gas station slop

were you to splay them out—

There’ll be hell to raise if he ever makes up

for the time they’ve purloined from him.

All of this for the sake of human connection—

a contortion act:

to wipe his father’s dysmorphic face from his mother’s cordate skull.

Swiss people used to be hard workers but now they are the sons of Wisconsinite heroin addicts

Your ancestors claw their way onto the last of the moribund ships—

packed as though they were livestock

with nothing but the soiled shirts on their backs.

There is no room for anything else,

there is no time to question

whether or not they are happy.

Alpine villages crumble, chalets grow barren,

and the chimneys do not know

they are exhaling their final trails of smoke—

wafting over the verdant meadows.

Ear splitting silence

reverberates against mountainsides,

pierces through cobblestone paths

and slate shingles, through shriveled

fodder and bales of hay, only to

turn back again— for there is not a soul

left to breathe it in, save for the

Sennenhunds who howl into the night,

deserted by their masters.

Alone they wander—-

pawing at the hardened earth

in hopes they may uncover

shallow graves of stillborns which have not yet decomposed.

You both abhor and mourn a land raped

by abject poverty, by beauty.

In the eyes of morose townsfolk

who have toiled incessantly since their conception,

pulchritude fails to silence the whining

of starving children whose solitary purpose

Is to populate the earth with God fearing men.

And all of this is behind them now,

as they set foot into the new world—

and it is this world that consumes them:

Drawn to gargantuan cheese factories,

they find comfort in something

that is static and unchanging, and it grounds them here.

They do not have time to wonder—

whether or not the scenery is too familiar,

too reminiscent of the misery they fought so

hard to escape.

They go to work, toil, once more

now cramped and devoid of sunlight

as the church and factories have usurped

them, and they grow cold in the palms of God—

like marionettes used only for seldom pleasures.

These ghosts of men, and their sons, stand over scorching vats

of cheese brine, perpetually stirring;

their bodies have hardened, muscle striations visible beneath

leathery skin, and you spot him there:

a boy with your own broad shoulders—

he is as young as you,

his eyes are innocent in a way that

yours have never been, they are not tired

though they have woken before dawn

to set their sights on the bleakness

of dairy, then grade school,

mass, dairy again; and they repeat this

monotony for many years

until they shift their focus

towards alcoholism, sex,

a hesitant marriage, then your

mother, and finally,

you.