A Poem by Kay Gabriel
Author: Poetry Editor
March 13, 2018
This month, as a part of the Poetry Coalition’s new initiative Where My Dreaming and My Loving Live, the Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight will feature poems of and about the body. This week’s feature is by Kay Gabriel.
Grace Zabriskie
sounds like jackoff if you do it right
athleticky, white and striped
a rumour glyphed in
cloth out of my hole:
“shut up”
Wrong
life cannot be lived rightly,
then there’s the Pines
Dopamine, ketamine, Acid Betty
Delict, persona, Howard Ashman
Doppelbanger, tea service, Grace Zabriskie
Diaresis, kohlrabi, Viktor Shklovsky
De-lovely, tweaking, Donna Summer
In a park thick
enough to hang
a beard on
the hunk masseur pummels your bf’s
ass like a doping cyclist
on the Tour! quel uphill climb
and the rain has commenced its
delicate lament over the orchards,
talented, having a great time
Once I looked out my apt. window
into the shaft to watch a V
of pelvis and an H of abs
a then-boyfriend jerked
me off with commas!
This bitch inside
with puppies yelps
when you prod her—
a wail your boyfriend compares
to the abrasive giggle (mine),
a seam of buttock, or
an interview on live TV
I always wanted to feel better,
“This very talented up-beat
having a great time lady”
Caller, you’re on air.
——
KAY GABRIEL is the author of Elegy Department Spring (BOAAT Press, 2017), the finalist for the 2016 BOAAT Chapbook Prize judged by Richard Siken. She’s one-fifth of Negative Press, a gay Marxist poetry collective, and co-edits Vetch: A Journal of Trans Poetry and Poetics. Find her recent and forthcoming writing in the New Inquiry, Salvage, Nat. Brut, TAGVVERK and elsewhere.
