as much as i’d wanted to believe it,
they weren’t two boys
with too much pomade in their hair
and too much denim between them;
no, just a blonde with a pixie cut
and her boyfriend
and her overbearing boyfriend
and her tattooed troublemaker boyfriend
and her bad boy book trope boyfriend
(my mind wanted to fill in these blanks
perhaps a little unfairly)
the gelatin silver photograph at once
lost its candor and its truth:
they were outsiders like us (were they really?),
but what did they know of hair slicked back
into greasy jet-black sine curves
and sun-dappled leather car seats
and whorling tobacco smoke,
hazy streetlight-lit trysts marked by
tucked-in cotton twill chinos,
ribbed wifebeater tank tops,
the brownstone monoliths of brooklyn;
these were not their glory days
(nor were they mine).
there was never art in the norm:
this beholder saw no beauty to behold
for what could they know,
of the fall of the great constantinople,
besieged and opulent,
the overland journey of a fleet,
to quench the ravenous whims of war?
what could they know,
of primitive andalusian
cante jondo and flamenco,
scottish-gaelic folk songs
what could they know—
of babel and babylon ,
tarnished daguerrotypes
of the selma march,
pacific islander funerary rites,
polynesian bark cloth,
of grecian frescoes and the rhetoric
of the orators of roman antiquity?
they too, much like myself,
know of labyrinths and afterglows:
what nobility, what patriotism lies
in aimless violence? in blood spilled?
i have vowed to write about it all,
with prose that tastes of morning-after mouths;
dry, astringent, greasy, salty-acidic like olive brine
left on ***** dishes in the sink overnight,
and poetry that sounds like what i'd imagine
scabs ripped from skin to sound like,
our wounds hissing from the heat of daylight,
the ugly undead-unliving poultice
torn from the gruesome truth:
about the startling gait of my dogs that
always seems to make me question
the limits of sentience,
but also their fur-sheathed bodies
dormant on hardwood floors:
their sleep, an unseemly schrödinger’s
superposition of rigor mortis and rest;
about the boyish indignation—no, fury—i felt
at having you order the same glasses frames,
i wear, because oversized lens, gold and tortoise shell,
champagne-colored acetate and dark gunmetal
belong to me because i found it first,
because i staked my claim to this identity
and way of life before you could grit your teeth
and claim your own queerness for yourself;
i hate it when you wait for me
during passing periods, armed always
with a patronizing compliment and a hug;
i hate that you can hold car keys
without fear or apprehension
and learned to drive (confidently)
far before i did;
i hate that you too, want ampules
upon ampules of oils and serums and creams
resting on your bathroom vanity,
in hopes of assuaging the invisible
angry red lumps framing your face;
i can spare no more peroxide for your countenance
because you refuse to realize that it takes
one to sting before they heal;
how many times have you
much like myself, vuestra elocuencia,
(unsung martyr of my elegies, clavel temprano
verde, gesto de rosa y de azucena)
much like myself, appraised those
tempting porcelain figures
with careful eye and quick-witted tongue,
a façade of feigned indifference
but hunger that ached to
keep you alive not on food nor drink,
but adrenaline, poring over pores
polaroids, and presagios,
head clenched between your knees in fetal pose
whispering mantras of "hermoso, hermoso"
and "are you too, like me?"
over and over with the sporadic breath
clenched in the colic chasm of your gut,
with monastic allegiance to your burden;
sé de un amor que no se atreve a decir su nombre—
i know of a love that dare not speak its name—
(but i am not love and love is not me,
so i will shout my nocturnes and sonnets
to the burgeoning night—without fear
all the words of english and spanish
would not even begin to describe
our doleful plight, dios mío:
i will have flesh shiny and taut as apples
between my jaws like a suckling pig
on the table of our feasting;
i will have the coarse-grained driftwood
of your pleasure shred and splinter my throat raw,
until voice hoarse and breath ragged,
your name is the only one that
comes to my lips;
tan largo me lo fiáis.
might i find port and asylum in your shallows?
might i find deception and deceit in your craggy promontories?
might i find barbed wire in your jungle and poison in your tributaries?
might my lágrimas sucias find rest in your age-old cobbles?
when our crystal cruets run empty,
we will press oil from our own olives;
perhaps more bitter than herbaceous,
maybe more astringent than fruit-like,
but it will be ours and ours alone
to anoint our hands and feet
and our hands and feet alone.
before you ask a poet for
counsel, friendship, love…
be certain you can brave
our collateral damage,
before you too, are nothing
but tephra, the shards that
remain after cataclysm
there is blood on my fingers
and i am unsure of where it is from
there is not even a pyrrhic victory,
not art nor vanguardism
in a war of attrition:
only decay, surreally ever-constant.
~fin.
inspired by the art of the menil collection, the life of federico garcía lorca, our fields of study in spanish v literature, 50s postwar greaser culture, the photography of bruce davidson, and s.e. hinton’s the outsiders.
