OK.
So this next poem I'm going to--
it has a dedication, but I'm dedicating it to Ander Monson
actually.
This poem resulted as a challenge.
And I will apologize ahead of time,
this poem is in terrible taste.
And I just have to fully acknowledge that it arose out
of a challenge.
I was having a conversation with two wonderful writers, Stacey
D'Erasmo and the poet Donika Kelly.
And Stacey was recalling an experience she had
of coming across a pornographic novel, which
was called Morning Glory Farm, a Sweet and Steamy Monster Romance
book.
Now, we were having a conversation
as writers about how the kinds of books
that sell thousands, thousands and thousands of copies.
And this is one of them, this book, Morning Glory Farm,
a Sweet and Steamy Romance, a monster romance book
is one of those.
Though she erroneously identified the title,
she thought the title was Milking the Minotaur, which
is actually the plot.
And it is a story of a young woman
who answers an ad for a job.
And she gets this job at a farm, where the livestock of the farm
are minotaurs.
And it is her job to milk the minotaurs.
But the minotaurs are male, so she is extracting semen
from the minotaurs.
It is a romance novel.
It has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.
But I thought this title, Milking the Minotaur,
was one of the most hilarious things that I had ever heard.
And so Donika said, I think you should write a poem called
Milking the Minotaur.
And I said to her, I think you should write a poem called
Milking the Minotaur.
And so we signed a pact that we were both going to do it.
And indeed, we did.
So this is the poem.
It is, as I said, it's in very poor taste.
And it is called "Milking the Minotaur."
A gloss here, Bear Week.
Does anybody know what Bear Week is?
Maybe not.
Bear Week takes place in Provincetown, Massachusetts,
a gay resort where large-bodied and hairy men and those
who like them gather all together
to appreciate each other.
And it's called Bear Week.
And Sniffies is a hookup app, a GPS hookup app.
I refer to that too, so just.
"Milking the Minotaur."
Apologies in advance.
"Minotaurs aren't real, so they cannot feel it when you milk
them, squeezing the hairy teat of myth.
And wasn't the Minotaur male in this imaginary mammary fantasy?
So maybe milking is extraction in the mode
of man-on-man pornography, in which a veiny male member is
milked into climax?
Do I embarrass you?
But you're already here.
And poetry is so embarrassing, sometimes in the extreme.
Speaking of which, I'm writing this whilst
naked on Herring Cove Beach, the story of this bovine fancy
reaching all the way down this windy strand.
The gods, or so we're told, are dead.
They are also amoral, neither good nor bad,
just moods, plots, urge.
I watch the tide surge against the sandy shore and wonder if I
am perhaps a bit of a milky minotaur myself,
expressing my imaginary milk with the other monsters gazing
on, like at some 60-man Bear Weak Sniffies circle jerk.
I've always known I was a kind of monster,
one whose body is a little ugly and out of control, whose
wants are camped well outside convention
like some forgotten moldy blue tarp Adirondack tent.
What are we meant to do with unauthorized desires, if we
are not, say, some rich, horse-crazy girl, braiding
and unbraiding her chestnut gelding's mane,
before straddling him and taking up the crop,
whipping him into a frothed-up gallop
across daddy's well-groomed terrain?
I can't feign ignorance, affect indifference,
as I don my jockstrap, cock ring, kaftan, and pearls.
Minotaurs, Medusa, old Sycorax imprisoned in a tree,
all the monsters end up pursued by some dumb hero,
clubbed, beheaded, dead.
The myth is there to warn us monsters
of what can be done to us, or in us, or on us, to tell us
we are obscene, with our horns, and hairy tales,
our scalp of writhing snakes.
Everyone's a fake, except us monsters
who are real or just really bad at hiding from main characters
as they blunder confident through their own lives
and through ours, their swords raised in bloody triumph
as they shame themselves with power.