Is it a video of myself // fucking like the old Romans did breathless
love transcending eras // goddamn Heraclitus can’t step in the same
river twice but look here I am // a white man desiring a white body
marbled pixels on a glass screen // a hunk a twink it’s all the same
to me there’s Timothée Chalamet // Elio playing Bach’s Postillion aria
he’s such a dick oh that’s how Liszt would’ve played it // oh Busoni
wah wah wah blah blah blah // Bach’s pure simplicity so damn gorgeous
Is it a video of myself do I dare // to eat a peach no jerk off with one
both of them tried it the story goes // Luca Guadagnino directing
skeptically taking a peach massaging it on his dick // it works
he told Timothée we shoot the scene // I know says Timothée
I tried it too like what the fuck // performative sexuality amirite
two straight men cast as the leads // Luca was able to look at me
and completely undress me // says Armie Hammer in Out Magazine
now he’s an abusive cannibal // can a man get any worse can he—
But who doesn’t love a twink // outlined by Bach’s figures or Ravel’s
oceanic sweep constellations // consolations the grainy camera
Lombardian sun lingering Elio’s just a boy only seventeen // Oliver’s a man
twenty four years old // what is the age where a boy becomes
a man is it a video of myself // a white man desiring a white boy
desiring a white boy desiring // a white man I’m twenty three years old
five years after the movie first // came out I saw it then and
Now I’m poised with the poem plump & perfect // biting into the peach Oh
wait I haven’t even gotten into Sufjan // who’s here with me in the sheets
of my ears teetering // the line between homosexuality & God
Sufjan who doesn’t come out publicly bc he deserves // a private life
but also bc the Christian girls won’t stream him if // he’s queer
openly yet I hear he lives with // his husband near me in Brooklyn I hear
he walks his dog in Prospect Park oh yes I’m a fangirl yes // I’m an idiot
yes I long for the music yes it twists its sour // into my ears
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Reuben Gelley Newman (he/him) is a writer and musician based in Brooklyn. His poems are available or forthcoming in diode, The Fairy Tale Review, The Journal, Variant Lit, Alien Magazine, and elsewhere. He has received support from Brooklyn Poets and Swarthmore College, and he was an intern at Copper Canyon Press. A Content Editor at The Adroit Journal and a Co-Editor at Couplet Poetry, he tweets @joustingsnail.
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image: Claire C. Wood, Fine Ass Officianado.
Rejection Letters 