Poem of the Week: Rickey Laurentiis

Faggot

As when a word lifts unexpectedly
________________________or implodes—
you had meant to say maelstrom but now
interposed between you and the open world,
male storm (no one would think to give a sex
to it, so were unready)—that was its arrival,

_____________________________fire
that didn’t act as one sheet but gathered
separately as flames around some common matter:
call it a heart, make this a Catholic scene, only the thorns
are missing unless they lie, like everything else,
beneath this oil-slicked water now risen, now ignited, as we are
ignited—like faggots thrown at the sinner’s feet
as he shakes, as he shouts It was only for love, as when all words abandon . . .

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Rickey Laurentiis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the recipient of several fellowships, including the Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Chancellor’s Fellowship from Washington University in St Louis, where he received his MFA. The author of the e-chapbook, Whipped, (Floating Wolf Quarterly), his individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Boston Review, Callaloo, Fence, jubilat, The Kenyon Review, The New York Times, Oxford American, Poetry and other journals.

Tagged as: Adam Fitzgerald, Faggot, poem of the week, rickey laurentiis