written by Jamie Townsend
Rejoice for I am endless in a garter belt and slip, rejoice!
Trace Peterson
I first saw my horizon in the foothills of Boulder
Exuberant sky unable to hold the rain, each afternoon in a cafe
Sat my ass on the sun, listened to Lingua Ignota, put down Bataille
I read Wrong
And watch the arc of a puckering asshole form it’s own microclimate
We worshiped a faith of inversion
These dizzying heights are super religious
Each day a storm that fizzles into crystalline detail
Our stubborn look frozen by a coat of chemical spray
Clump of hair stiff as agave
Nihil of endless abundance
Stretching I pressed my frock between earth and heaven
Our body invents warmth
I read Cunt Ups on the edge of a fire pit
In a land of perpetually unhealthy air
Supple lungs like flat spinarets of cotton candy
Listen to Fields of Rhye and my heart disintegrates
Wake up sucking on a stone bowl like an unwashed toe
Giddy as an empty shirt
That billows my torso into an aerie outline
I was a fire break, a pergola, a technicolor cairn
The biggest selfie attraction the desert has to offer
Ugo’s Seven Magic Mountains in the flesh
An oil stain, a crease
An unreal pink blanketing the sierras at dusk
There’s a line that says Do Not Cross, a flimsy string
And I can’t escape this border of self mythologizing
But I want the poise of what’s forbidden, its deceptive stillness
I want to hold shadows, dirt in all its windswept formations
Our throat a slab of rock in Death Valley
Your touch a sudden cloudburst
Jamie Townsend is a genderqueer poet and editor living in Oakland. They are half-responsible for Elderly, a publishing experiment and hub of ebullience and disgust. They are the author of several chapbooks including, most recently, “Pyramid Song” (above/ground press, 2018), as well as the full-length collection Shade (Elis Press, 2015). An essay on the history and influence of the literary magazine Soup was published in The Bigness of Things: New Narrative and Visual Culture (Wolfman Books, 2017). They are the editor of ‘Beautiful Aliens: A Steve Abbott Reader’ (Nightboat, 2019) and ‘Libertines in the Ante-Room of Love: Poets on Punk’ (Jet Tone, 2019).
Ramblr Magazine 