Two Poems || J. Marcus Weekley

Dancing My Heart Out at Pulse

It’s 1:27 a.m. and I hear church bells in my head while the guy dancing next to me splashes me with sweat. Later this morning, Chance, our Sunday School teacher, will talk about following Christ with all your heart, but right now, the guy next to me smiles like he knows something.

I didn’t always think of Christ’s body at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. Heck, I wasn’t always awake at 2 a.m. unless I was reading West Coast Avengers or Sandman. Nowadays, in June, after hours of people ordering hot wings and mimosas and not tipping, I want to wake up all of me with the sweet rhythms of bodies swaying in neon and bass. The dance floor is Heaven, right, now.

I want the dark-haired guy to kiss me, to open up his heart to Christ and me and we can both be part of Christ’s body together. I want…

Public Feeling and Personal Feeling Alignment: A Partial Quiz

27 a. Saying President So-and-So is ignorant or buffoonish or like a Cheeto is posting photos of your cat, expecting everyone to say, “How cute!” as he barfs up a hairball.

27 b. When I was an infant, my mother abandoned me with my father and his mostrecent whore (I’m sure she was actually a beautiful misunderstood person— everyone’s gotta eat); I wonder if I thought about tax reform and if, when I grew up, I would know I was grown up, or stay in some ways an infant the rest of my life?

32 a. Because of President So-and-So’s Foreign Policy, we believe we can no longer look at someone to whom we aren’t alike and not call her DoesThisLadyHaveAVisa or WillHeKillMe. Doesn’t that entitle us to throw stones?

32 b. I don’t really know whether I loved drawing as a child, painting as a child, but I remember piano lessons—a very middle-class thing to do—and how the teacher, a lady whose house smelled a bit like a church pew, and how I believed if the house was on fire and I was trapped under a metal beam, this piano teacher would save me. At least, try.

69 a. And when President So-and-So has told certain Unmentionable People with Particular Proclivities of a Sexual Nature how unnecessary (ThankYouForYourVote) we are, then other certain Unmentionable Businesses with Particular Religious Proclivities (ThankYouForYourVote) can talk love love love while selling you a Shit Sandwich, extra pickle. Some people like Shit Sandwiches.

69 b. I knew I liked Mr. Ribbick because of his brown hair, hazel eyes (maybe they were brown, you know, memory is rarely accurate), the dark hair on his long fingers, and how his voice was a campfire after a long day canoeing then swimming and fishing in the cold lake. I knew I liked cock when, at the YMCA in Beloit, Wisconsin, as a child mind you, I stared at the shriveled pink thing poking out of a man’s dark bush and wanted it, like a burning something in my belly rising to my chest, but I smothered it, foolishly thinking it wouldn’t ignite the rest of me. I knew I was a knife in the heart of my self.

143 a. President So-and-So has a family, desires, a childhood, photos of him/her/theirself on vacation like many other Caucasian, certain-class, certain-belief folks; he eats, fucks, pays, shits, plays, sells, prays. Can we agree?

143 b. Can we agree?

Provenence: Submission.

J. Marcus Weekley has one sister, two brothers, all half-siblings (like merpeople?). Hasn’t been to Japan, Vietnam, Spain, or Korea: one day. Have poems/proems in/forthcoming in Futures Trading, Across the Margin, and others. Haven’t spent more than one day in the Louvre. Has ekphrastic prose poem chapbook, Singing in the Merman Cemetery, forthcoming (CW Books, 2018). Hasn’t finished painting, photographing, screenwriting. Have: https://whynottryitagain.wixsite.com/photo.

Featured Image: “Glitterball” by ladyb is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0