Hey y’all,
I’m not a particularly bright person. Clever, sure. A quick study, yeah. But I’m not particularly bright—I still write letters in the wrong order and backwards, still have trouble telling left from right except in a mirror, still too often see numbers as colors.
In grade eight, I took geometry. There was no actual geometry course, or any advanced math program—this was a public school at the turn of the century—just a teacher on her planning break who would spend the hour talking shit about anything and everything (stupid parents, textbook authors, my inability to consider which baby names paired well with “Anderson,” chives). She eventually left for maternity leave shortly after the holidays. The textbook required a lot of drawing on wax slips. The author called them “patty papers.” He also based everything around “postulates” and “corollaries.” I folded a lot of origami. Patty cake. My school was under repair and there was a lot asbestos dust that seeped through the plywood covers. Pasty crust. I wound up having to take summer school with a group of kids from the bougie private program the next city over. That was the last time in twenty years I’ve had to think about cosines.
I feel like being a dim bulb has kept me blissfully unaware of what I can’t do until many years after the fact. I couldn’t get a job in academia to save my life. I can’t get arrested in the poetry world. My teeth don’t line up. I say I’m a historian, but that feels like play pretend. I say am I writer but who isn’t. I say I’m a lot of things. What even is a cosine? Postulate.
Oh well. That’s okay. Patty cake.
Anyway, I wanted to give you an early issue because I have a case of the fuckits. There are some little pieces I wrote last week after I offered folks on Twitter a poem in exchange for a word. (The ones here are “semen,” “cannibal,” “popsicle,” “osmosis,” “party,” and “ephemeral.) They are somewhere between nonfiction and slightly fantastic nonfiction. There are also a couple older pieces that never really found a home: they’re yours now.
HEY! You can still get a poem or collage from me if you give you give $35+ the One Fair Wage Emergency Fund OR a local mutual aid fund of your choice. Email me a copy of the receipt and an address where I can send my thanks.
Yours,
KJ
twitter poems
briefs
laying in bed drenched
you smell like crayons i
smell like chickpeas—
i turn to you and in my
beach trash drawl say
ey boy you like drinkin
all that baby batter
you stare back and mimic
my shithead academicese:
yes and i was pleased
you consumed my
semen.
we laugh we kiss
the sweep
i prop your ankles
on my shoulders:
“what if I ate
all your little toes?”
you look up
from the game show:
“that would make
you a cannibal.”
you graze my jaw
with your arches.
“besides, then you
couldn’t kiss them—
like you should while
the ads are on.”
summer
sitting in parch dead grass
sprinkler under milk thighs
bite into an orange popsicle
ice sheer stabs my skull
“only girls lick—you want
people to call you a faggot?”
sunscreen excess leeches
from my wristless pudge
headache half-gone when
i champ again to the stick
august
we stood at the big blue
machine
thirty-five cents in hand
sweaty
our plastic jug handle
greasy
waiting for the fill up
reading
the words on the front
slowly
re-verse-os-mo-sis
maybe
we will taste something
maybe
boys stop me say hi
walking to the Mobil
for menthols, army
surplus jacket, 2005,
baby fat nineteen
walking as i walk
red sports car u-
turns stops ten feet
ahead, blond, big
eyes wheel grip
“hey man do you
know any guys who
wanna party & play”
walking as i walk.
ephemeral meemaw
she’s combing her wig
again, a big blonde
number—
(“actually two wigs
stitched together,”
she says sliding
on tights)
i don’t know her
age, her last name,
that man—
(“sometimes we
let a stray dog in
because it’s better
than the whining.”)
she kisses my head
the history books
i don’t know what to tell you—
or, rather, i don’t know
what you want me to tell you.
“the cruelty is the point,” you say
over and over, and i nod
because this is still new to you.
the truman library gave me money—
i was a historian, once—
so i spent two weeks in kansas city.
i looked inside box after box
(they gave me money, after all),
to figure what i wanted to tell you.
during my first college history course,
the instructor told us truman slept
like a baby after ordering the bomb.
imagine a place like kansas city,
there and then gone, just like that:
the cruelty is the point.
fear the leaders who don’t care
about the history books, sure—
but also fear the ones who do,
because they will give you money
to look inside box after box—
they know your stories are theirs, too.
“the cruelty is the point,”
i say over and over, and you nod—
i was a historian, once.
very online
“everybody knows what a bad poem is”—
you tweeted this out and i cut the words up,
sent them back to you:
“everybody knows
what a
bad
poem
is”
we all had a good laugh.
but i remain stuck in the space between
the joke and its kernel. what makes a bad
poem bad? don’t worry: i won’t fully go
marianne moore, all quote marks and
reference guides, tricorn wordplay—
i, too, dislike myself enough
for all that.
yet, still. this entire month,
i’ve been stuck on a poem. i’ve only figured
out a few lines but i’ll tell you about it. it was
supposed to be for my birthday: i’m thirty-
three now, and a poem doesn’t rust or add
to my credit card debt. anyway, in the poem,
i’m at the doctor’s for a physical and he
writes in his notes:
“face: fat
like a fox
who has grown
more clever
than quick”
he then has a good laugh
as i’m stuck bare-assed on an exam table.
what makes a poem bad? what makes it
bad? what is its kernel? where is its shame:
the fat face of a fully-grown man, a tweet
made in joking earnestness, its equally
bare-assed reply, public self-examination,
a fox in full feast, “fiddle”?
Did you like this post? You don’t have to buzz in, dweebs. Just share it. Thanks. —KJ