VERSAILLE
the figure of speech loses its distance
in dreams whole seasons become truncated
ill-tempered waking to the assurance of Prince's KISS
fading I get up to walk through the shimmering air
as the schizophrenic screen makes a tenuous leap to fairytale
in the painting of the coronation the stocking feet are jeweled
a fuck you to Paul Simon's most recognizable image
MY SISTER KNOWS THE SADDEST PEOPLE
It seems like the skeleton key to Arthur Russell's oeuvre
singing to almost perfect strangers
ANGELS
'exploring the evolution of
masculinity through fashion' appears
as a suggested like on my feed
I dream about seeing the Venice
of your dreams as our day in day out
slowly clogs with retroactive culture
on playing Virginia Woolf in
THE HOURS Nicole Kidman
remarked I did enjoy being
anonymous
towards the end of the album
a sudden transition
between the rambling skit & fan
favorite cut provides suitable
occlusion for a series of precious lyrics
BIG DOUGH REHAB b/w
a detailed list of silk robes
regular freesia
sheer lace underwire
troubleshooting the mechanics
of LET’S GET IT ON in zero G
has been the main concern
of the scientific community lately
I've been worried about the future
DREAM
we imagine that
all currency is imaginary
with complete devotion to the change
waiting at the downtown Starbucks
far too long, exhausted
shell of reggaeton splayed
on the operating table of a spacecraft
the corner Duane Reade gleams
professionally desolate like rock salt
scattered late February, clientele outside
snaking drunk around
around the jagged edge of city hall
to find some undesired
time apart mediated by weather
the shape of
black leggings filled in
less by body than thought
RELIGION
he seemed to live on air & light
reading THE THORN
blooms in the most sublime
vocal fry
until it dislocates words
emphatic descending
dagger of high school
binder the immense darkness
inside your mouth pen
15 Club inverted
pentagram graffiti
six feet
deep & lifting tiny
hands through the black out
window fallen
sidebar portal
click to LUCIFER rainbow
embroidered satin jacket
wet hair look
all the meat lost
to Anger
demon mirror
and imagining the rouche
if I could
fuck your clothes
I would be constantly
following a god
through a rainy city
entirely crushing undertow
TERROIR
A specialty liquor store that doesn’t have origin
you know like the kind that births monarchs
a line make me a servant threading filigree
across the cut the song is
a fist thrown like a ghost for real
the unclenched hand
disintegrating in its melisma
in the film the aging pop star councils
the abused teenage aesthete
& her urban drama explodes beyond
the falsely claimed power of daddies
the block is erased by new money
as a single note still clings
to its former life in weak evanescence
the exhausted
heroism of patience
get lifted up on Saturday nights the local
harmony relying more on difference than
what feels strangely familiar
PAD
Look for me beneath the soles of your feet, brah, brah as if we were forced to chose the dust to be included in life, hefting a weight, a marginal list of favorites from every aspect of the day to day, we told ourselves that pervasive gentle humor had draped itself over our nascent fear, settled into it, cheek to cheek, huddled together in a booth, in a flash we saw this phantom manifest as masculine femme, pale yet ample beneath, the shape recollecting an endless continuum of Dutch Masters, pink and brown sliced down the middle, one cloud merging with another folded neatly inside the horizon, the color of flesh and blood somehow misplaced, real love, your body remains, a temple to the lord, an overblond Bond villain, something thoughtlessly commonplace, mistaken for a featureless surface where the presence of any detail might seem grotesque, unearthly, nervously drawing the cloth away, in the small talk about Courbet and the angels, an image given weight with brief pause, an effect of layering imbuing what was once unseen metaphysical force, syncretic, call to worship, a blunt object ringing against our skulls, cartoon hearts leaping out of our chests, indelicate light, coercion of feeling, everything we’re up against collapsing into anxious boredom, on the bed reaching for a genderless Beach Boys song, hidden like a comic or porn in a hymnal, foaming pink mold woven through trees, landscapes depicted in misshapen cartoon bubbles, in the hope that inspiration would eventually reveal itself within a rudimentary language of blood, disappearing before the square halo of a phone screen, piles of soggy discarded fliers by the entryway, an urgency restrained by ugly formal limitations, questions tugging at the ragged edge of breath, what’s that song?, who’s the artist?, where’s it coming from?, and then the requisite, robotic fucking, resolve pushed beneath a weightless discharge, slab of plastic, powder thick as MAC, with all that feeling
Jamie Townsend is a queer poet, publisher, and editor living in Oakland, California. They are half-responsible for Elderly, a publishing experiment and persistent hub of ebullience and disgust. They are the author of several chapbooks and ephemera from Portable Press@YoYo Labs, Little Red Leaves Textile Editions, and Ixnay Press, as well as a forthcoming chap titled Pyramid Song (above/ground, 2018). Their first the full-length collection, Shade (Elis Press), was released in 2015. An essay on the history of the New Narrative magazine Soup was published in The Bigness of Things: New Narrative and Visual Culture (Wolfman Books, 2017) They are currently editing a forthcoming volume of Steve Abbott's writings (Nightboat, 2019).