So this manuscript deals primarily
with kind of explorations of desire,
the politics of desirability, and the way
that these things intersect with violence, either interpersonal
or the violence of the state against disabled and trans
bodies.
This next poem carries an epigraph
from a dear friend of mine, and I
think it's one of the weirder poems in the book,
but it's one I dearly love.
The title when translated from Latin
means vanity of all vanity.
"Vanitas Vanitatum".
The aesthetics of cum are also its politics--
Bradley Trumpfheller.
I was called a pansy before I was ever
called a faggot, flower child, wilted wrist.
The Bradford pear, Pyrus calleryana,
is a deciduous tree common throughout North America.
It blossoms in early spring.
Branches bursting into five petaled, pale, white flowers.
It is an invasive species that covers half the country.
Seeds spread on the wind, not unlike disease.
Some scientists have even described its spread
as an epidemic.
The trees are best known for their smell when they bloom.
I remember the spring air thick and familiar scent of cum
bitter in my mouth.
Perhaps the cumshot is a vanity.
Liquid flower crown, and aren't there
also people who would call my lust invasive, an epidemic?
1930, the Hays Code enforced a strict set of moral guidelines
on Americans.
Most notably, if someone within the film
performs an immoral act, they must be punished onscreen.
I wonder which of my body's verbs might be deemed immoral.
The first time I held a boy on my tongue,
I held him like a petal.
In Rebel Without A Cause, Plato, a queer-coded teen
enamored with the protagonist is shot by police.
He dies holding a gun with no bullets inside.
Sometimes, I forget that to be is also a verb.
For years, I've been obsessed with poisonous plant.
Example, every part of the foxglove
is deadly, though most of all the root.
As a child, I chewed its petals, bitter and splayed
in the grass.
I didn't know it was poison.
Only the way it tore through my body.
22 years later, Sal Mineo, the actor who portrayed Plato,
was stabbed to death in West Hollywood.
Sometimes, I dream of a world without metaphor.
The first time I saw another queer person on film,
I watched him die, watched a straight man act out the trial
where he fought for a job lost because of desire,
and the virus that would end his life.
Every time a lover comes inside me, I feel fear pulse.
A poison in my chest.
Yes, I am ashamed of this.
Flowers.
When that first boy asked me how his cum tasted,
I said it tastes like flowers.
Sometimes, I think straight people only
want to read poems about faggots fucking
if there's the risk of someone dying in the end.
Sin, and its suitable punishment.
Hays Code's ugly ghosts.
How many ways can I metaphor semen into something
with sharper edges, digitalis, cracked thermometer, cut
onions, bitter milk.
It's the cumshot of a mental war.
I refuse to parish where the poem ends.
There's a joke here about tiny deaths,
but I'm not going to tell it.
I just wanted to be fucked like I'll live forever.
Wow, what an end.
That was--
It's one of my favorites.
I love it.
It feels very much like my Lana Del Rey moment.
I love it.
I mean, it's also just the way that the poem sort of just
continues to expand and expand until the ending sort of even
expands it further.
I just wanted to say that.
It's great.
Love it.