A Poem by sam sax
Author: Poetry Editor
June 18, 2019
This week, a poem by sam sax.
Cruising Abecedarian.
after learning all the wrong names for throat i
bled profusely for seven days.
cannot tell you how often i broke
down weeping in grocery aisles & alleyways
exorcising seeds planted in me by men
from passing trains.
give me an easier path to follow & i’ll
have lived me some easier days. simple as that.
in the beginning i’d canter at any
john who’d half-snap at me.
kids these days don’t cruise any more, instead co-
lapse into their phones pass photographs &
maps of their kinks back and forth,
narrow eyes out back behind the club.
o to be kids these days. to never inevitably become another
patch in that
quilt of tragically dead faggots. but fuck that. it’s a gift to be trained
raw as fresh butchered cow. to
stare down god in his wet watering mouth &
turn just so as to present one of many holes
upward at his always thickening
vehicular manslaughter. show me a person
who refuses the body over that
xerox of pleasure & i’ll beg
you try again. try opening a man’s
zipper without all that wet data spilling out.
——
SAM SAX is a queer jewish poet and educator. He’s the author of Madness, winner of the National Poetry Series, and Bury It, winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. He’s currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and lives in Oakland.
