5.10 / October 2010

Barnes and Noble

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Widening my aperture for Ai
(It’s what you want. If you didn’t/you wouldn’t
beg to be poured into my mouth)

I’m distracted by a young Asian squatting
in front of the philosophy section

Even if I get
that cabin by the creek patient dog at my feet
while I write my wide poems
I’ll think of my car
the road where trains run to the city
the mall near the station
its second-floor bathroom and someone like this man
waiting in a stall
until I get there
to tear down the metal partition
or gently open the door

Color Me

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He cruised me across from Holiday Inn
junior year
thought my body mouthwatering
as he straddled the dorm bed
unbuttoning my pants
joyous to find it already hard and wet

Your black body is so beautiful
God I want you

Thunder in his mouth
Yet the most delicate music swells with restraint

God knows there’s a Have mercy
just below my Adam’s apple
when I’ve gotten an Asian man
into my hands
but I don’t say

Your tiny waist
hooded bite-sized purple-vaulted dick
Your willingness to let me beat
the drum of you

I don’t say that
I just beat the drum

holy vendetta

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marines get tested every month
& that motherfucker brings me papers
every month

if the papers are clean
my legs lift automatic
asshole rising like a halo

this catholic confessional pussy
absolves the white cock
steams the straight crease
of semper fi

he’s gonna suck my dick too

Armor

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Now you got me thinking
about that boy
chainmail
under his robe of hoodie

Damn R
It’s like a concealed revolver
You know there’s heat
something giving swagger

Imagine all the broken teeth
between us
how I would actually take
nigger whispered
into each lobe
Fuck nigger tender
miraculous mending
we could do
this reckless boy
brandishing youth

I’d let him take my wallet

Shit I’d give him the password
to my Facebook account so he could
read my emails and vandalize walls
And if pedigree is a collar
on a leash
let him yank and shorten it
tie it down and go medieval
on my ass


Kevin Simmonds is an artist based in San Francisco. His books include Mad for Meat and Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality. His films, such as feti(sh)ame and Singing Whitman, have screened at San Francisco Frameline, Hong Kong's InDPanda Short Film Festival, Vermont Bear Film Festival, Barcelona's MIMI LGBT Short Film Festival and Provincetown International Film Festival. Most recently, he wrote the music for the Pulitzer Center-commissioned Voices from Haiti: A Post-Quake Odyssey in Verse, a multimedia project about Haiti that debuted at the 2011 National Black Theatre Festival.