Jeremy Radin
—
Sexual Anorexia
It begins to feel
like a ceremony itself. Sacrifice
the opposite of blood. You put
the goat back together, melt
the blade down to ore, graft
the scaffold back onto the trees.
A sort of god, or beastly warden
guarding a sacred section of sky.
Seven-headed eel, fire-breathing
flower, bone-white condor with
a scorpion’s wicked tail—I bend
to you in wrapt devotion, but due
to the erotic nature of bending
I’m cooked, stung, beaten, eaten.
My expanding empty emperor,
I repeat your name into the mirror
as my body grows, unfolds, until
I wear a gown of myself, loops
of lard pooling around my ankles.
Myth, I submit. May you have no
edges. May the priestess leave me
in the meadow once it is done—
the vow made and kept. May she
leave me writhing in this miserly
flesh—an offering, a dancer
dancing
backwards
out of the flood.
Beautiful
I am going to die alone, surrounded by beautiful women.
I am being very specific when I say beautiful, I mean
a casting of the eye elsewhere, is that what I mean? Sure.
Beautiful women, beautiful, let’s forget me with each other.
One slept with me in order to “research a role.”
One sucked upon my earlobe on the tram back
to the Eeyore section of the Disneyland parking lot.
It is patriotic to hurt each other & I am through
with patriotism. From now on, only time
is to be shattered by the promises breaking
all over it. I was promised a girl & a garden.
I waited. I became something else. You should
have seen me. I was so beautiful. I was so
fucking beautiful no one saw.
Jeremy Radin is a poet, actor, playwright, teacher, and extremely amateur gardener. His poems have appeared (or are forthcoming) in Ploughshares, The Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, The Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Slow Dance with Sasquatch (Write Bloody Publishing, 2012) and Dear Sal (not a cult press, 2017). He was born and lives in Los Angeles where he earned his MFA in Eating Large Sandwiches at Brent’s Delicatessen.
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