Poetic Exercise in the Service of Love
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After S. X. Rosenstock
Her collar pop; her victory dance; her strut;her cowboy boots, her bolo tie, but more—her ragged leather coat that dragged the floor;her basement bedroom set; her screaming mutts;her rowdy kin; her constant cracking nuts;her “baby-girl”; her jellied meats; her snore;her toothy kiss; her soccer-TV roar;her beers in bed, her drink, her drunk. But whatcould only be called chivalry. And toesso fat and cold on tickle-torture nights.Her velvet hair, her hands that feared no grime,her Marilyn mole, her take-it-as-it-goes.Those pizza dates. Her hunger, her delightin old things, new things, me. Her laugh, her time. [End Page 272]
AMANDA GUNN is a doctoral candidate in English at Harvard, where she works on poetry, ephemerality, and Black pleasure. Her work appears in, or is forthcoming from, Poetry, Poetry Northwest, and The Baffler. She was recently named a Stegner Fellow.
