Thursday, July 18, 2024

"American Sonnet for My Past and Future Assassin [“Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk”]" by Terrance Hayes


Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk
Of musk, muster & deliberation crawling over reasons
And possessions I have & have not touched?
Should I fail in my insecticide, I pray for a black boy
Who lifts you to a flame with bedeviled tweezers
Until mercy rises & disappears. You are the size
Of a stuttering drop of liquid — milk, machine oil,
Semen, blood. Yes, you funky stud, you are the jewel
In the knob of an elegant butt plug, snug between
Pleasure & disgust. You are the scent of rot at the heart
Of lovemaking. The meat inside your exoskeleton
Is as tender as Jesus. Neruda wrote of “a nipple
Perfuming the earth.” Yes, you are an odor, an almost
Imperceptible ode to death, a lousy, stinking stinkbug.

Joan Miro

No comments:

Post a Comment

From "The Great Hunger" by Patrick Kavanagh

VI Health and wealth and love he too dreamed of in May As he sat on the railway slope and watched the children of the place Picking up a pri...