Saeed Jones

Dear Uncle Sam He’s not your type. He kisses men with eyes open, talks with them shaded or averted to acquiescent asses. When cordoned & questioned, he laughs. Beware. His laughter beguiles. Beware. He never shoots straight. Always curls fetal in the arms of any one who can still him. Never sleeps alone. Give him a gun, & he may turn it into a prop for a plié. Give him a gun, & he may turn it on himself & every fool who believes you. He’s claimed bodies in every major city east of Chicago, saw mine heaving among strobe-lit throng & marked me: his sweat clinging to my nape, our silhouettes on bedroom walls, now a mirage blurred by desert dunes, now only the caress of lines hardened hands scrawl: I’ll be home next month … I’ll be home next year … I’ll be … I’ll … _____________________________________________ L. [...]

Mother puts on my lipstick standing behind me, dragging the lipstick across my lips as if they were her own. Her free hand steadies my face. It is the red of her nails I want on my mouth, the nails so lacquered they catch the flash of my camera and hold it. Mother puts on my lipstick and I stare into the mirror, my lower lip glowing beneath her hands. Her hands which are all of her, and which hold me this way, as she wants me. ________________-after by ________________________________________________ Matthew Siegel is a poet and essay writer living in San Francisco. His work has appeared in Cimarron Review, Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, TheRumpus.net, and elsewhere. He is a former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford and currently teaches writing and literature at San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He can be found online at http://matthewsiegel.us/. He tweets at @MatthewSiegel_. Related [...]

This entry is part of a series, In a Dark Room» , In a Dark Room» It was late in the smoke-painted bar, a quarter past the blue hour, when The Interviewer pulled The Poet into an even darker room. And in the dark of that darkness, came the first question. Tell me, said the Interviewer, where do your poems live? Maybe where all poems live: in doubt, shame, fear, prayer and ecstasy. Maybe they live in the part of me that still sees the Rickey, pubescent, gap-toothed, shy to smile, shy to speak, not man-enough, not black-enough, desiring, but who thought to be desired was outside him. Or that they live in this Rickey, older, who smiles, speaks, is man-enough, whatever “man” means, is black-enough, whatever “black” means, desires, apparently is desired, is desired. Wherever the overlap is is where Rickey (his poems) lives. But poems also move. The [...]

This entry is part of a series, In a Dark Room» It was late in the smoke-painted bar, a quarter past the blue hour, when The Interviewer pulled The Poet into an even darker room. And in the dark of that darkness, came the first question. Tell me, said the Interviewer, where do your poems live? You’re asking so you must have them and have them alive in the hand you hope will one day hold me. The dark room was the color of closed eyelids now. Music reached in through a window deprived of its pane. With his eyes on the music, The Interviewer asked What was the last sin your poems committed? My friend, my friend, I was born to a father who didn’t want what I am. I am doing reference work in sin, and born to fuck married men with no shame in confessing it. This [...]

This entry is part of a series, In a Dark Room» It was late in the smoke-painted bar, a quarter past the blue hour, when The Interviewer pulled The Poet into an even darker room. And in the dark of that darkness, came the first question. Tell me, said the Interviewer, where do your poems live? My poems have roommates, and until two weeks ago, slept on a loft bed they bought in 2006 while still a paralegal. The last girl my poems had over called that shit a bunk bed. They forget to take out the trash on Sunday. They are from Ohio, and know enough to start there. They live lives I can almost imagine, and rarely, but sometimes, ones that I can’t. In the subway, in karaoke dive bars, in my grandfather’s house. In my mother’s text messages. They’re trying to fall in love with someone tangible [...]

This entry is part of a series, In a Dark Room» It was late in the smoke-painted bar, a quarter past the blue hour, when The Interviewer pulled The Poet into an even darker room. And in the dark of that darkness, came the first question. Tell me, said the Interviewer, where do your poems live? Most of my poems are conjured between the pages of old fairy-tale books and on flickering screens. It’s true that many of them wield swords. Lately, they’ve been exploring the disappeared home of my childhood in Tennessee. The home I grew up with no longer exists, the gardens and woods I remember wandering nothing but ugly rubble I can only bear to look at on Google Earth once in a great while. They have never done anything with the rubble, so I must regrow everything from memory. The rocks and roots, the violets and [...]

This entry is part of a series, In a Dark Room» It was late in the smoke-painted bar, a quarter past the blue hour, when The Interviewer pulled The Poet into an even darker room. And in the dark of that darkness, came the first question. Tell me, said the Interviewer, where do your poems live? “Hello Darkness, you smell like hot dogs.” (from my poem “Ralph Wiggum, Redacted” – part of the chapbook ) Most of my poems reside at . The dark room was the color of closed eyelids now. Music reached in through a window deprived of its pane. With his eyes on the music, The Interviewer asked What was the last sin your poems committed? A few of them got all dressed up in their Sunday best and presented themselves to the editors of some of the more prestigious, pretentious literary journals, who said things like [...]