(yikes!) Poetica
George Abraham
I want you to Choke me.
I said this to my doppelganger recently only he was the version of me still in denial abt balding.
We met at a Starbucks bc yes, I’d like some coffee with my cream & sugar.
Grubhub keeps emailing me asking if I want falafel today & I, for one, feel Exposed.
Says the person with the poetry quote of a white man saying See Me tattooed on his arm—my friend tells me that same poet likes flirting with boys decades younger than him, and now all I want to do is cover up his words with a cathedral.
After complimenting my back tattoo, the man in the locker room shower asked if I played music. I said, it’s not the kind of music you’d expect.
It’s like Fallout Boy’s Thanks Fr The Memories, only instead of memories, subtweets.
███ says I’m happy for you if you’re happy for you and now his name is Regina George.
It’s summer out and I think I like-like someone. Keep in mind: if I let this become an aubade, that means I failed you.
I am, all at once, a well-specified distance away from everyone I love, and that distance is measured in song. This means springtime is my saddest music.
If my right arm is a river, and my left, a sea, then it follows that there is a country between my arms, just not the country you’d expect.
Is there a word for I want to carry a child but my body cannot afford it in this language?
There’s a daddy at the center of this, and yet, this poem has fathered nothing.
All the white suburban moms at the reading have already cancelled me. This means all the white suburban moms everywhere have cancelled me. This means half of AWP has cancelled me.
Srry not srry, ranting into a microphone abt your white upbringing isn’t a poetics; that’s just privilege with daddy issues.
I’m not asking you to make room for me in your language, I’m just saying I want you to Synonym me, aggressive.
I’m sorry if you were expecting this poem to be in English.
I wrote this in sorta-English and now I’m his doppelganger. I wrote this in sorta-English and now it’s a takeover.
I wrote this underwater to say, Choke me.
Every time we kiss, I triangulate the distance between me and you and the ocean. It’s not the kind of ocean you’d expect. I think I mean this poem is a drunk tweet gone wrong.
I wrote this at an airport to say, Choke Me. This poem is hemorrhaging now
like it’s a promise worth breaking. I’ll faun like I’ve Persephone’d. I’ll go to hell like I deserve it. I’ll daddy-issue oblivion. I’ll you myself before
the them-ing.
Once a man trespassed in me & I want him fire-anted to death, I want to resurrect him from oblivion just to curse him to a second loveless eternity.
Just to prove we both can get away with murder.
If you’re reading this, I promise, I’ve cried in an airport for you.
Believe me when I say, I love the way the light holds me
stronger than any lover.
