“Toy” by Evan J. Peterson

Author: Poetry Editor

September 22, 2014

Today, a poem by Evan J. Peterson.

TOY

______for and after Rimbaud

Ultimate trade, you are a porcelain philosopher,
your mouth full of poetry, wicked invective,
and other nimble things. Grown men kneel
before you. Supple muse of bi-ravenous
Verlaine, cruel eyes flick beneath your brow.
Your ladylike fingers slip out your prick
and coax it off into a glass of milk. You dip
your quill into shit and commit marginalia
to the Magna Carta. How dainty your buttocks
appear beneath the swish of a goatish tail.
False synaesthete, you paint color onto sound.
How absolutely modern. How positively barbaric.
Soon, your patron will grow tired of your abuses.
He will shoot you in the wrist, leaving
your martyrdom incomplete. He forgets
your other arm, your tender pink feet.

——

EVAN J. PETERSON is the author of Skin Job and The Midnight Channel, and editor of Gay City 5: Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam. His writing appears in Weird Tales, The Stranger, The Rumpus, Assaracus, and Aim for the Head, from which his poetry was excerpted in The New York Times.