<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I imagine my parents were too shy
to get up to anything spectacular.
My mother never left her high school
science class bored to rub one out
in the stall of the girl\u2019s room. Older,
their days were so full of dayness
& when it got dark they fumbled
together under their seasonal duvet.
My dad traded the electric bill for booze,
they never did it with the lights on.
They thought the commercialization
of the green m&m was the peak
of modern aphrodisiacs. Then my dad
claimed impotence from medication
& prolonged exposure to criticism.
His unriseable dick somehow pitched
in the center of every conversation<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A person comes to the counter I am working
it like any man, they say they were wrecked<\/p>\n\n\n
in the street by a siren, their head around & making great transformations. Recently to the surface with human genitalia. She extends every day for a bottle of isopropyl alcohol. I tell when she rinses her mouth she feels the insects die again<\/p>\n\n\n\n My therapist tries to suggest Em Robidoux is a queer poet living in Providence, Rhode Island, following the completion of their MFA in poetry at the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop. Through their work they seek to explore plains of grief, humor, and bodily pleasure. Their poems have appeared in Palette Poetry<\/em>, Press 53<\/em>, as well as twice in Glass Poetry,<\/em> with work forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Barren Magazine <\/em>and Nat Brut<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My mother never left her high school \/ science class bored to rub one out \/ in the stall of the girl\u2019s room.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2270,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespectacle.wustl.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
tender & explosive. They say I\u2019m a girl<\/em>
& become a girl. She says she is always moving<\/p>\n\n\n
she\u2019d spent three good weeks as a frog only to belly up<\/p>\n\n\n
her wrist where the skin has been sliced & stitched back.
She admits she forgot to get angular. Now she has to keep coming<\/p>\n
her we\u2019re running low<\/em>. She says get more<\/em>, she says<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nAppointment<\/h4>\n\n\n
that I don\u2019t want to be her
patient anymore. It\u2019s Monday
& she wants me to get a real life<\/em>
& stop asking for her input
on my glamor shots. She knows
how important praise is to my recovery.
I bring paint samples from the hardware
store to her office. I show her every
variation of \u201cSalmon Sunset\u201d that\u2019s available.
Am I drawn to this color palette
because of a traumatic incident from childhood?
Maybe involving a time when I didn\u2019t feel
quite good enough? I can\u2019t think of one.
Her office has nothing good on the walls
that I can hide my mind inside of. She even
drinks out of a plain glass teacup. I ask
if she\u2019s noticed my shoes why she hasn\u2019t
said anything about them. I walk artfully
around what she wants. I ask how she\u2019s feeling,
she thinks I already know what she\u2019s going to say
& I do. Our hour becomes an exchange of sighs. Am I
feeling rejected? Turned on? She does a perfect
imitation of a person unbothered. I tell her
I think she\u2019d be really good at holding a grudge.
She taps the boring face of her watch & waits
for me to gather my swatches. I wait for her
to say she loves me before I go.<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n