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Richard Siken’s Crush, selected as the 2004 winner of the Yale Younger Poets prize, is a powerful collection of poems driven by panic and obsession. Siken writes with ferocity, and his reader hurtles unstoppably with him. His poetry is confessional, gay, savage, and charged with violent eroticism. In the world of American poetry, Siken's voice is striking. In her introduction to the book, competition judge Louise Glück hails the “cumulative, driving, apocalyptic power, [and] purgatorial recklessness” of Siken’s poems. She notes, “Books of this kind dream big. . . . They restore to poetry that sense of crucial moment and crucial utterance which may indeed be the great genius of the form.”
62 pages, Paperback
First published April 11, 2005
About the author
Richard Siken
9 books3,175 followersRichard Siken is an American poet, painter, and filmmaker. His poetry collection Crush won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, a Lambda Literary Award, the Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, Conjunctions, Indiana Review and Forklift, Ohio, as well as in the anthologies The Best American Poetry 2000 and Legitimate Dangers. He is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize, two Arizona Commission on the Arts grants, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,796 reviews
March 19, 2024
siken captures the Gay Longing in such a perfect, powerful way & suddenly you feel your heart taking root in your body
also it's cool how u can just know that a person is straight™ if they claim they 1) don't understand why blood & death r such prominent themes in these poems and/or 2) didn't find any deeper meaning in them
also it's cool how u can just know that a person is straight™ if they claim they 1) don't understand why blood & death r such prominent themes in these poems and/or 2) didn't find any deeper meaning in them
July 26, 2007
I felt like I had the wind knocked out of me after I read this. There's a thread of a story here, but it's abstract and shadowed. Almost a ghost of a story. What's left are the raw emotions of the actual experience, which is what great poetry is: distilling the massive events that make up a life until there's nothing left but the urgent parts, the ones that carry the meaning.
April 26, 2020
"and the gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it."
I read Richard Siken's poem "Wishbone" on the internet. I read it once and closed the page. The next day I was painfully aware I couldn't leave it behind. That my mind kept circling back to his words. So I read it and re-read it again and again. Dozens of times, until I realised it would never be enough, so I ordered his book.
I have never in my life anticipated the arrival of a book more than I did with this. My entire body was aching for it. And then it arrived.
With a start like this, and with expectations as high as mine, you'd think the book would come up short. That it would somehow not deliver. But it does. It truly fucking does.
Siken is beyond talented with words, that much is clear, this entire collection is a work of pure art, something you rarely find these days. Every line is powerful, it's got secrets. Every poem has meaning, and soul and something deeply terrifying about it.
I am in love with it. That's the easiest way to put it. My copy is worn out from being opened, read in, then thrown onto the table or put carelessly down as I try to gather myself up from my messy emotional pile on the floor and try to deal with, well... myself.
I've read many books, some of them have taught me about the world, about people, about feelings or ideas. This book taught me something monumental about myself.
It changed me, and I'm not even kidding or exaggerating. I read it (or devoured it might be more accurate) and suddenly found a side of myself put into words. Words I was never able to find myself, but needed more deeply than I'd realised.
I'll never stop reading this book, and that's the great thing with poetry, analyzing, understanding and interpreting and simply feeling it, is a never-ending process. I carry his words with me everywhere, both in the shape of his actual book, but also in who I am.
"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it."
not from the absence of violence, but despite
the abundance of it."
I read Richard Siken's poem "Wishbone" on the internet. I read it once and closed the page. The next day I was painfully aware I couldn't leave it behind. That my mind kept circling back to his words. So I read it and re-read it again and again. Dozens of times, until I realised it would never be enough, so I ordered his book.
I have never in my life anticipated the arrival of a book more than I did with this. My entire body was aching for it. And then it arrived.
With a start like this, and with expectations as high as mine, you'd think the book would come up short. That it would somehow not deliver. But it does. It truly fucking does.
Siken is beyond talented with words, that much is clear, this entire collection is a work of pure art, something you rarely find these days. Every line is powerful, it's got secrets. Every poem has meaning, and soul and something deeply terrifying about it.
I am in love with it. That's the easiest way to put it. My copy is worn out from being opened, read in, then thrown onto the table or put carelessly down as I try to gather myself up from my messy emotional pile on the floor and try to deal with, well... myself.
I've read many books, some of them have taught me about the world, about people, about feelings or ideas. This book taught me something monumental about myself.
It changed me, and I'm not even kidding or exaggerating. I read it (or devoured it might be more accurate) and suddenly found a side of myself put into words. Words I was never able to find myself, but needed more deeply than I'd realised.
I'll never stop reading this book, and that's the great thing with poetry, analyzing, understanding and interpreting and simply feeling it, is a never-ending process. I carry his words with me everywhere, both in the shape of his actual book, but also in who I am.
"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it."
January 20, 2024
"Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake
and dress them in warm clothes again.
How it was late, and no one could sleep, the horses running until they forget that they are horses.
It's not like a tree where the roots have to end somewhere, it's more like a song on a policeman's radio,
how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple
to slice into pieces.
Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we'll never get used to it."
"Scheherazade" by Richard Siken
7
"You are playing cards with three Jeffs. One is your father, one is your brother, and the other is your current boyfriend. All of them have seen you naked and heard you talking in your sleep. Your boyfriend Jeff gets up to answer the phone. To them he is a mirror, but to you he is a room. Phone's for you, Jeff says. Hey! It's Uncle Jeff, who isn't really your uncle, but you can't talk right now, one of the Jeffs has put his tongue in your mouth. Please let it be the right one."
Verse 7 of "You Are Jeff" by Richard Siken
2017 will be marked in my reading annals as re-discovering my love of poetry. My favorite of the new poets I've discovered is Richard Siken. His first volume of poems Crush, was a revelation to me; Crush changed poetry for me.
24
You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you don't even have a name for.
Verse 24 of "You Are Jeff" by Richard Siken
You can sense the chaos and panic in these poems. More than that, you can sense the desire.
A kiss, blood, hunger, hidden glances, light, leather, pain ... these poems take you out of your comfort zone and make you confront your fears.
1
"The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater
because he is trying to kill you,
and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,
and you are ready to die in this swimming pool
because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means
your life is over anyway.
You're in eighth grade. You know these things.
You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do
long division,
and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless
he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you
didn't do,
because you are weak and hollow and it doesn't matter anymore."
Verse 1 of "A Primer for the Small Weird Loves" by Richard Siken
Every Boi can relate. We've been there ~~ desire and terror experienced at the same time.
I highly recommend Crush; even if poetry isn’t really to your liking, I think you might like this.
May 15, 2018
Ugh why does everyone love this book? Siken, the winner of the 2004 Yale Series, is clearly a capable poet, and there were a few moments in this collection that were beautiful and lucid. Otherwise, though, the poems are so overblown (too many words going in too many directions) and drowning in imagery of bodies, knives, and death. Oh, and SO much cheesy, disembodied dialogue.
The form of the poems in this collection felt like a cop-out: you can only splatter lines across a page so many times before I become suspicious that your form isn't serving the poem, you're just doing it because you can't seem to do anything else successfully. I also thought his endings consistently flopped: almost half the poems end with some form of repetition (either direct or implied). Two of the most obvious examples:
"You, the moon. You, the road. You, the little flowers/by the side of the road. You keep singing along to that song I hate. Stop singing." -Road Music
"It spins like a wheel inside you: green yellow, green blue,/green beautiful green./It's simple: it isn't over, it's just begun. It's green. It's still green." -Meanwhile
I think what really bothers me about the book is the lack of modulation in the narrator's obsessions, mood, and tone. Unless you are a brilliant, brilliant poet, I don't want to read a whole collection of your poems that are set in a forest or come out of a panic or pine endlessly after a lover. This is just one of those books that you can read all the way through and, the next day, not remember more than a handful of images or lines because there is too much junk crowding the beauty out.
The form of the poems in this collection felt like a cop-out: you can only splatter lines across a page so many times before I become suspicious that your form isn't serving the poem, you're just doing it because you can't seem to do anything else successfully. I also thought his endings consistently flopped: almost half the poems end with some form of repetition (either direct or implied). Two of the most obvious examples:
"You, the moon. You, the road. You, the little flowers/by the side of the road. You keep singing along to that song I hate. Stop singing." -Road Music
"It spins like a wheel inside you: green yellow, green blue,/green beautiful green./It's simple: it isn't over, it's just begun. It's green. It's still green." -Meanwhile
I think what really bothers me about the book is the lack of modulation in the narrator's obsessions, mood, and tone. Unless you are a brilliant, brilliant poet, I don't want to read a whole collection of your poems that are set in a forest or come out of a panic or pine endlessly after a lover. This is just one of those books that you can read all the way through and, the next day, not remember more than a handful of images or lines because there is too much junk crowding the beauty out.
Read
April 1, 2021update: I finished and it made me want to launch myself into the sun
reading gay poetry that makes me want to launch myself into the sun just to feel something, part 2
reading gay poetry that makes me want to launch myself into the sun just to feel something, part 2
June 20, 2022
I can’t NOT give Siken some credit, as this book was published in 2005 and I’m convinced it must have had some sort of impact or influence on the contemporary poets I regularly enjoy reading (Crispin Best, Sam Riviere and even Richard Scott kept coming to mind, for instance). And then, I don’t like treating contemporary poems as tiny puzzles asking to be made sense of. In fact, I normally avoid trying to grasp the meaning behind every single line – “a good poem understands itself”, as Emily Berry put it in an interview for Chicago Review of Books. Besides, with contemporary poetry, I’m trying my best to enjoy the ride and genuinely have a good time.
So… while I couldn’t make out what the poet was trying to communicate (or WHY) for most of the time I spent reading Crush, I tried not to let this ruin my experience. What really kept me from enjoying Siken’s book is that when he did get the message across, it just felt like I was reading a jumble of uninteresting, fake deep, cheesy and generally cringe-inducing platitudes in verse form. Very instagrammable at times, I’ll give it that, but does it not lack some serious substance?
“I’m battling monsters, I’m pulling you out of the burning buildings
and you say I’ll give you anything but you never come through.
Even when you’re standing up
you look like you’re lying down, but will you let me kiss your neck, baby?”
Or these lines, in which
“Things happen all the time, things happen every minute
that have nothing to do with us.”
Still, some of the images he constructed were pretty clever, and they make good use of language in expressing perceived queer inadequacy. I just wish these were more frequent!!
“History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
History is a little man in a brown suit
trying to define a room he is outside of.
I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours.”
So… while I couldn’t make out what the poet was trying to communicate (or WHY) for most of the time I spent reading Crush, I tried not to let this ruin my experience. What really kept me from enjoying Siken’s book is that when he did get the message across, it just felt like I was reading a jumble of uninteresting, fake deep, cheesy and generally cringe-inducing platitudes in verse form. Very instagrammable at times, I’ll give it that, but does it not lack some serious substance?
“I’m battling monsters, I’m pulling you out of the burning buildings
and you say I’ll give you anything but you never come through.
Even when you’re standing up
you look like you’re lying down, but will you let me kiss your neck, baby?”
Or these lines, in which
“Things happen all the time, things happen every minute
that have nothing to do with us.”
Still, some of the images he constructed were pretty clever, and they make good use of language in expressing perceived queer inadequacy. I just wish these were more frequent!!
“History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
History is a little man in a brown suit
trying to define a room he is outside of.
I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours.”
April 15, 2024
Bullets, movie-like violence, car rides, stitches and gritty motel rooms form recurring themes in this bundle. The world sketched is grimy and bleak, with occasional flashes of beauty and tenderness, despite violence
The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater
because he is trying to kill you,
and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,
and you are ready to die in this swimming pool
because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means
your life is over anyway.
You’re in the eighth grade. You know these things.
You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do
long division,
and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless
he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you
didn’t do,
because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.
- A Primer for the Small Weird Loves
Richard Siken his debut bundle is exciting. The American setting, with derelict towns, very much reminded me of Ocean Vuong his novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and the thematic overlap continues with the focus on gay love. At times bitter, harsh and disappointed, sometimes lyrical, the poems in Crush feel both urgent and true.
Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out is a brilliant poem on love and all the stories and roles we project upon it, even if the outcomes are far from what we expected based on childhood templates of fairy tales.
Violence is also something that permeates the poetry of Crush, giving it a gritty and slightly desolate feel.
I am not sure if I fully agree with the extravagant praise Nobel laureate Louise Glück gives in the foreword, but this is definitely a very readable and relatable bundle, if not very uplifting.
Fragments of poems that I enjoyed:
his skin barely keeping him inside
I wanted to be wanted and he was
very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good moving
- Little Beast
Oh, the things we invent when we are scared
and want to be rescued.
I Had A Dream About You
We have not been given all the words necessary.
The Dislocated Room
The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater
because he is trying to kill you,
and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,
and you are ready to die in this swimming pool
because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means
your life is over anyway.
You’re in the eighth grade. You know these things.
You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do
long division,
and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless
he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you
didn’t do,
because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.
- A Primer for the Small Weird Loves
Richard Siken his debut bundle is exciting. The American setting, with derelict towns, very much reminded me of Ocean Vuong his novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, and the thematic overlap continues with the focus on gay love. At times bitter, harsh and disappointed, sometimes lyrical, the poems in Crush feel both urgent and true.
Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out is a brilliant poem on love and all the stories and roles we project upon it, even if the outcomes are far from what we expected based on childhood templates of fairy tales.
Violence is also something that permeates the poetry of Crush, giving it a gritty and slightly desolate feel.
I am not sure if I fully agree with the extravagant praise Nobel laureate Louise Glück gives in the foreword, but this is definitely a very readable and relatable bundle, if not very uplifting.
Fragments of poems that I enjoyed:
his skin barely keeping him inside
I wanted to be wanted and he was
very beautiful, kissed with his eyes closed, and only felt good moving
- Little Beast
Oh, the things we invent when we are scared
and want to be rescued.
I Had A Dream About You
We have not been given all the words necessary.
The Dislocated Room
November 4, 2023
trying to stop myself from downloading a dating app by re-reading crush and listening to fall out boy - it might be backfiring
---
i can't stop thinking about this
---
sometimes you just need to read your favourite poetry collection again, just to feel something
---
i can't stop thinking about this
---
sometimes you just need to read your favourite poetry collection again, just to feel something
August 6, 2022
24
"You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for."
This last panel from "You Are Jeff" concluded one of the best poems from this book. If you are a GR friend of mine, I have probably already sent you a poem (or 2, or 3) from this book as I've taken my time to read through it.
From the first line of the first poem "Scheherazade":
"Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again."
to the conclusion of the last poem "Snow and Dirty Rain":
"My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back."
I've been in love with this collection!
I found an interview with the author on line:
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/fig...
"Crush, at its core, is about rupture. The desire to touch, the gesture of touching, becomes dangerous, damaging, after the hand, withheld for so long, finally makes an attempt at contact. Simultaneously, and without pity, the natural world and its physical laws restrict the human form and its capacities. All of us are trapped in our skins and drowning in gravity. Physics is unforgiving. Nature is predatory. We do not walk through a passive landscape."
Poetry, maybe more than most writing, speaks to everyone differently. It even speaks differently to the same person during different readings (time, place, reader). I am sure I will get more out of this collection as I continue to open this book again regularly.
"You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for."
This last panel from "You Are Jeff" concluded one of the best poems from this book. If you are a GR friend of mine, I have probably already sent you a poem (or 2, or 3) from this book as I've taken my time to read through it.
From the first line of the first poem "Scheherazade":
"Tell me about the dream where we pull the bodies out of the lake and dress them in warm clothes again."
to the conclusion of the last poem "Snow and Dirty Rain":
"My applejack, my silent night, just mash your lips against me. We are all going forward. None of us are going back."
I've been in love with this collection!
I found an interview with the author on line:
https://bombmagazine.org/articles/fig...
"Crush, at its core, is about rupture. The desire to touch, the gesture of touching, becomes dangerous, damaging, after the hand, withheld for so long, finally makes an attempt at contact. Simultaneously, and without pity, the natural world and its physical laws restrict the human form and its capacities. All of us are trapped in our skins and drowning in gravity. Physics is unforgiving. Nature is predatory. We do not walk through a passive landscape."
Poetry, maybe more than most writing, speaks to everyone differently. It even speaks differently to the same person during different readings (time, place, reader). I am sure I will get more out of this collection as I continue to open this book again regularly.
February 17, 2017
Do you remember Prometheus?
That thief of fire who was bound to the rock in order for the vulture to pick at his liver, every day? That liver grew back every day for the sole purpose of being eaten again. The liver wasn’t helpful to Prometheus, it was only a source of pain. Can you imagine what it would be like to know that your liver would be eaten from your body day after day? There must be an immense sense of dread, knowing that what’s going to happen today is inevitable.
This is not a book about Prometheus, but it may as well be. (We are playing with fire here, after all. At least, love can feel like a fire.) Every poem in this book is essentially the same. The poems are strong individually, but read together, they build something stronger. Images are repeated again and again with only slight variations (driving on the road, running out onto the road, lying in the road). The poems can’t help but to return to the same thing again. It’s painful, but it’s a delicious pain, glorious in love and lust and in being alternately strong and vulnerable.
What the book doesn’t tell you directly is that Richard Siken was partially influenced by the death of his boyfriend. I don’t want to make any assumptions here about how that has influenced the content, but I will say that the poems read like a lover trying to move on from something that is, well, crushing. Moving on is not something you can just will yourself to do.
In the end, the speaker believes he has escaped the cycle: “We are all going forward. None of us are going back.” Maybe, maybe not. It may be that moving forward requires a lot of going round in circles. And we know where those circles are going to take us.
“We’ve been driving all night.
We’ve been driving a long time.
We want to stop. We can’t.”
But why would we want to stop?
That thief of fire who was bound to the rock in order for the vulture to pick at his liver, every day? That liver grew back every day for the sole purpose of being eaten again. The liver wasn’t helpful to Prometheus, it was only a source of pain. Can you imagine what it would be like to know that your liver would be eaten from your body day after day? There must be an immense sense of dread, knowing that what’s going to happen today is inevitable.
This is not a book about Prometheus, but it may as well be. (We are playing with fire here, after all. At least, love can feel like a fire.) Every poem in this book is essentially the same. The poems are strong individually, but read together, they build something stronger. Images are repeated again and again with only slight variations (driving on the road, running out onto the road, lying in the road). The poems can’t help but to return to the same thing again. It’s painful, but it’s a delicious pain, glorious in love and lust and in being alternately strong and vulnerable.
What the book doesn’t tell you directly is that Richard Siken was partially influenced by the death of his boyfriend. I don’t want to make any assumptions here about how that has influenced the content, but I will say that the poems read like a lover trying to move on from something that is, well, crushing. Moving on is not something you can just will yourself to do.
In the end, the speaker believes he has escaped the cycle: “We are all going forward. None of us are going back.” Maybe, maybe not. It may be that moving forward requires a lot of going round in circles. And we know where those circles are going to take us.
“We’ve been driving all night.
We’ve been driving a long time.
We want to stop. We can’t.”
But why would we want to stop?
September 19, 2020
Crush
was so damn bad. I hate so much to DNF a book and this only has 62 pages and I wanted so bad to DNF.
This little poetry book is divided into three parts, the author at first doesn't tell you what is going on but later all the parts are related and is kind of a story. Mostly every chapter contain the word “kill”, “suicide”, and “hit” it was tiresome reading the same chapters over and over with the same words just in different scenarios, the person who speak and tells these stories is in an abusive relationship and want to escape so this person just create scenarios in their head and speak aloud for some kind of liberation. I only liked the first but after that every section describes how this abusive relationship started and grew.
I will just leave my favorite part of this poetry book.
This little poetry book is divided into three parts, the author at first doesn't tell you what is going on but later all the parts are related and is kind of a story. Mostly every chapter contain the word “kill”, “suicide”, and “hit” it was tiresome reading the same chapters over and over with the same words just in different scenarios, the person who speak and tells these stories is in an abusive relationship and want to escape so this person just create scenarios in their head and speak aloud for some kind of liberation. I only liked the first but after that every section describes how this abusive relationship started and grew.
I will just leave my favorite part of this poetry book.
November 27, 2022
I was obsessed with this collection when I was 17.
Unsure whether I have got more, or less stupid
Unsure whether I have got more, or less stupid
April 22, 2017
Once again, I return to rating poetry on a scale of "how much of it did I understand?" This one's language is easy to follow and the entire thing is comprehensive and you can really see the emotions and angst, but still, I couldn't find any deeper meanings in the poems. Perhaps I couldn't relate to them, but for the majority of this, I wasn't impressed.
My favorites from this collection: Little Beast, Litany in which Certain Things are Crossed Out, and You Are Jeff #24
My favorites from this collection: Little Beast, Litany in which Certain Things are Crossed Out, and You Are Jeff #24
June 20, 2024
This is a grief-stricken, painfully loving, violently obsessive collection that feels like a frantic stream of consciousness, with each poem twining together to create a story in feelings. It’s a bit fragmented at times, lending to the air of desperation. It doesn’t feel as though Siken is composing these words as much as they are flowing out of him uncontrollably and it is a matter of life and death that he gets all the words down. These poems are the grief of a mourning man put into words. They are his shame, his fears, his longing, his loneliness. There is a violence associated with this love because of the circumstances of it and the self-hating that can come with being queer in a time/place that it is not accepted that reminds me quite a bit of the violent thoughts in These Violent Delights, which I found to be especially prominent in “Wishbone” and “Driving, Not Washing”. There is so much content in these poems, but it all whittles down to Siken’s raw emotions, which overpower the narrative, as his cyclical writing forces us to go round and round with him on this repetitive ride that he is stuck in.
Louise Glück writes an incredible forward for this collection and I can’t say it better than her when she said: “That Silken turns life into art seems, in these poems, psychological imperative rather than literary ploy: the poems substitute the repeating cycles of ritual for linear progressive time—in Crush, the bullet enters the body and then returns to the gun. . . the poems are driven by what they deny; their ferocity attests to the depth of their terror, their resourcefulness to the intractability of the enemy's presence."
Below, I’ve copied down some excerpts and full poems that I really love. My favorite poem, and possibly my new favorite poem(?) was ”Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”; my favorite parts are excerpted here, because boy, is it a bit long.
favorites:
[excerpts from] “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”
Every Morning the maple leaves.
Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out
You will be alone always and then you will die.
So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog
of non-definitive acts,
something other than desperation.
. . .
I can already tell you think I’m the dragon,
that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon,
I'm not the princess either.
Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.
. . .
Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.
You still get to be the hero.
You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!
What more do you want?
I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re
really there.
Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?
Let me do it right for once,
for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,
you know the story, simply heaven.
. . .
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
. . .
Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.
Crossed out.
Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something
underneath the floorboards.
Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle
reconstructed.
Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all
forgiven,
even though we didn't deserve it.
. . .
You said I could have anything I wanted, but I
just couldn’t say it out loud.
Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.
. . .
Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it
Jerusalem.
We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not
what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,
. . .
Forget the dragon,
leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.
Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,
in gold light, as the camera pans to where
the action is,
lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into from, close enough to see
the blue rings of my eyes as I say
something ugly.
I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,
and I don’t want to be the kind that says the wrong way.
But it doesn’t work, these erasures, these constant refolding of the pleats.
. . .
[excerpt from] “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves”
1
The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater
because he is trying to kill you,
and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,
and you are ready to die in this swimming pool
because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means
your life is over anyway.
You’re in the eighth grade. You know these things.
You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do
long division,
and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless
he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you
didn’t do,
because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Driving, Not Wishing”
It starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed, always the same
running from something larger than yourself story,
shoving money into the jaws of a suitcase, cutting your hair
with a steak knife at a rest stop,
and you’re off, you’re on the run, a fugitive driving away from
something shameful and half remembered.
They’re hurling their bodies down the freeway
to the smell of gasoline,
which is the sound of a voice saying I told you so.
Yes, you did dear.
Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from the kingdom
to kingdom through the wilderness,
where you learn things, where you’re left to your own devices.
Henry’s driving,
and Theodore’s bleeding shotgun into the upholstery.
It’s a road movie,
a double-feature, two boys striking out across America, while desire,
like a monster, crawls up out of the lake
with all of us watching, with all of us wondering if these two boys will
find a way to figure it out.
Here is the black box, the shut eye,
the bullet pearling in his living skin. This boy, half-destroyed,
screaming Drive into that tree, drive off the embankment.
Henry, make something happen.
But angels are pouring out of the farmland, angels are swarming
over the grassland,
Angels rising from their little dens, arms swinging, wings aflutter,
dropping their white-hot bombs of love.
We are not dirty, he keeps saying. We are not dirty. . .
They want you to love the whole damn world but you won’t,
you want it all narrowed down to one fleshy man in the bath,
who knows what to do with his body, with his hands.
It should follow,
you know this, like the panels of a comic strip,
we should be belted in, but you still can’t get beyond your skin,
and they’re trying to drive you into the ground, to see if anything
walks away.
[excerpt from] “You Are Jeff”
22
You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves
you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terri-
ble, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself
a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy,
and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to
choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and
he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your
heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you
don’t even have a name for.
[excerpts from] “Snow and Dirty Rain”
. . .
… My dragonfly,
my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing
for blood, but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw,
and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is
a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me
tight, it’s getting cold. We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and a gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence,
but despite the abundance of it…
. . .
… I’ll give you my heart to make a place
for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger.
Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars
for you? That I would take you there? …
. . .
… I would like to meet you all
in Heaven. But there’s a litany of dreams that happens
somewhere in the middle…
. . .
… Moonlight making crosses
on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
We have been very brave, we have wanted to know
the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes.
. . .
The way you slam your body into mine reminds me
I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling,
and they’re only a few steps behind you, finding
the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren’t
stitched up quite right, the place they could almost
slip right through if the skin wasn’t trying to
keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side
of the theater where the curtain keeps rising.
. . .
… I made
this place for you. A place for you to love me.
. . .
… We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues, I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
4.5/5
Louise Glück writes an incredible forward for this collection and I can’t say it better than her when she said: “That Silken turns life into art seems, in these poems, psychological imperative rather than literary ploy: the poems substitute the repeating cycles of ritual for linear progressive time—in Crush, the bullet enters the body and then returns to the gun. . . the poems are driven by what they deny; their ferocity attests to the depth of their terror, their resourcefulness to the intractability of the enemy's presence."
Below, I’ve copied down some excerpts and full poems that I really love. My favorite poem, and possibly my new favorite poem(?) was ”Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”; my favorite parts are excerpted here, because boy, is it a bit long.
favorites:
[excerpts from] “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”
Every Morning the maple leaves.
Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out
You will be alone always and then you will die.
So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog
of non-definitive acts,
something other than desperation.
. . .
I can already tell you think I’m the dragon,
that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon,
I'm not the princess either.
Who am I? I'm just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.
. . .
Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.
You still get to be the hero.
You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!
What more do you want?
I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re
really there.
Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?
Let me do it right for once,
for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,
you know the story, simply heaven.
. . .
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
. . .
Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.
Crossed out.
Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something
underneath the floorboards.
Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle
reconstructed.
Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all
forgiven,
even though we didn't deserve it.
. . .
You said I could have anything I wanted, but I
just couldn’t say it out loud.
Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.
. . .
Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it
Jerusalem.
We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not
what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,
. . .
Forget the dragon,
leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.
Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,
in gold light, as the camera pans to where
the action is,
lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into from, close enough to see
the blue rings of my eyes as I say
something ugly.
I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,
and I don’t want to be the kind that says the wrong way.
But it doesn’t work, these erasures, these constant refolding of the pleats.
. . .
[excerpt from] “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves”
1
The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater
because he is trying to kill you,
and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,
and you are ready to die in this swimming pool
because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means
your life is over anyway.
You’re in the eighth grade. You know these things.
You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do
long division,
and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless
he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you
didn’t do,
because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Driving, Not Wishing”
It starts with bloodshed, always bloodshed, always the same
running from something larger than yourself story,
shoving money into the jaws of a suitcase, cutting your hair
with a steak knife at a rest stop,
and you’re off, you’re on the run, a fugitive driving away from
something shameful and half remembered.
They’re hurling their bodies down the freeway
to the smell of gasoline,
which is the sound of a voice saying I told you so.
Yes, you did dear.
Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from the kingdom
to kingdom through the wilderness,
where you learn things, where you’re left to your own devices.
Henry’s driving,
and Theodore’s bleeding shotgun into the upholstery.
It’s a road movie,
a double-feature, two boys striking out across America, while desire,
like a monster, crawls up out of the lake
with all of us watching, with all of us wondering if these two boys will
find a way to figure it out.
Here is the black box, the shut eye,
the bullet pearling in his living skin. This boy, half-destroyed,
screaming Drive into that tree, drive off the embankment.
Henry, make something happen.
But angels are pouring out of the farmland, angels are swarming
over the grassland,
Angels rising from their little dens, arms swinging, wings aflutter,
dropping their white-hot bombs of love.
We are not dirty, he keeps saying. We are not dirty. . .
They want you to love the whole damn world but you won’t,
you want it all narrowed down to one fleshy man in the bath,
who knows what to do with his body, with his hands.
It should follow,
you know this, like the panels of a comic strip,
we should be belted in, but you still can’t get beyond your skin,
and they’re trying to drive you into the ground, to see if anything
walks away.
[excerpt from] “You Are Jeff”
22
You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves
you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terri-
ble, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself
a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy,
and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to
choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and
he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your
heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you
don’t even have a name for.
[excerpts from] “Snow and Dirty Rain”
. . .
… My dragonfly,
my black-eyed fire, the knives in the kitchen are singing
for blood, but we are the crossroads, my little outlaw,
and this is the map of my heart, the landscape
after cruelty which is, of course, a garden, which is
a tenderness, which is a room, a lover saying Hold me
tight, it’s getting cold. We have not touched the stars,
nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
to the hero’s shoulders and a gentleness that comes,
not from the absence of violence,
but despite the abundance of it…
. . .
… I’ll give you my heart to make a place
for it to happen, evidence of a love that transcends hunger.
Is that too much to expect? That I would name the stars
for you? That I would take you there? …
. . .
… I would like to meet you all
in Heaven. But there’s a litany of dreams that happens
somewhere in the middle…
. . .
… Moonlight making crosses
on your body, and me putting my mouth on every one.
We have been very brave, we have wanted to know
the worst, wanted the curtain to be lifted from our eyes.
. . .
The way you slam your body into mine reminds me
I’m alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling,
and they’re only a few steps behind you, finding
the flaw, the poor weld, the place where we weren’t
stitched up quite right, the place they could almost
slip right through if the skin wasn’t trying to
keep them out, to keep them here, on the other side
of the theater where the curtain keeps rising.
. . .
… I made
this place for you. A place for you to love me.
. . .
… We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues, I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
4.5/5
October 12, 2022
cried in my ice cream :(
January 16, 2021
Absolutely loved it. With all my heart and tears. The pain and pleasure of reading the pain and pleasure of someone else's pain and pleasure.
Want to read
November 10, 2022y’all it’s gay……😳
May 2, 2013
(I read this sleepless and aching.
I've read parts of this book separately and reading it whole now takes me to places I thought I left, a previous lover read to me a poem by him, I've read lines of the book once so many times that some days of mine were titled by some of these verses.
By the end of the book I was just drained from the bits of me that Siken's words swallowed.
The poem Saying Your Names should be read loudly, so loudly that the names and the verses will take place in your mind and between your ribs.)
I've read parts of this book separately and reading it whole now takes me to places I thought I left, a previous lover read to me a poem by him, I've read lines of the book once so many times that some days of mine were titled by some of these verses.
By the end of the book I was just drained from the bits of me that Siken's words swallowed.
The poem Saying Your Names should be read loudly, so loudly that the names and the verses will take place in your mind and between your ribs.)
December 5, 2023
it’s crazy how i use the english language to talk shit on twitter when some people use the english language to write like this.
3.5
3.5
January 20, 2016
When I started reading this I couldn't believe what I got myself into.
I am not a poetry fan so some parts at the beginning cracked me up and I tried to find some sense in them and I failed.
But later... Some parts... Most parts ... Literally broke my heart...
And for those parts I am giving this 5 stars because I can't 4.5.
I am not a poetry fan so some parts at the beginning cracked me up and I tried to find some sense in them and I failed.
But later... Some parts... Most parts ... Literally broke my heart...
And for those parts I am giving this 5 stars because I can't 4.5.
QUOTISH SPOILERS
July 13, 2007
SIken's Crush, his first book which also won the Yale Young Poets' award in 2004, is one of he most complete works of poetry I've come across in years.
He uses the pacing of his long line to slow time, and create a darker atmosphere within the verse, where shadows move from walls and creep along the legs of lovers. Time drags in elongated moments, or appears in flashes of memory and scenescape. His pace and image teach us fight from the first two pages how to read the work, and how to prepare yourself for the worlds of panic, death, and love which are to come. Siken reminisces in sadness and joy, madness and damagingly clear thought. He pairs image and notion with time and yearning. There is beauty in the voice and damage of this book.
Siken's poems are punk rock anthems, old country ballads, 60's B-movies, pulp novels, tin pail lunch boxes stuffed with old polaroids and love letters. His poems progress to a down tempo drum beat, and the skill in line break leaves the reader constantly moving forward, the combination forces us to digest and contemplate the words as they come, but never let up a moment for us to stop chewing. It's almost dumbfounding how Siken combines the long breath of a Ginsberg with the complete, unornamental word choice of a Creeley.
Crush is a project in obsession. The repetition of pacing and break builds on the down tempo into a culminating panic under the weight of body and the gravity of obsessive love. Siken has, within Crush, created a world of love and death, of paranoia, where voices drift in and out, where the self questions its other aloud, causing disbelief in the fact of the world even as it builds around us into existence.
He uses the pacing of his long line to slow time, and create a darker atmosphere within the verse, where shadows move from walls and creep along the legs of lovers. Time drags in elongated moments, or appears in flashes of memory and scenescape. His pace and image teach us fight from the first two pages how to read the work, and how to prepare yourself for the worlds of panic, death, and love which are to come. Siken reminisces in sadness and joy, madness and damagingly clear thought. He pairs image and notion with time and yearning. There is beauty in the voice and damage of this book.
Siken's poems are punk rock anthems, old country ballads, 60's B-movies, pulp novels, tin pail lunch boxes stuffed with old polaroids and love letters. His poems progress to a down tempo drum beat, and the skill in line break leaves the reader constantly moving forward, the combination forces us to digest and contemplate the words as they come, but never let up a moment for us to stop chewing. It's almost dumbfounding how Siken combines the long breath of a Ginsberg with the complete, unornamental word choice of a Creeley.
Crush is a project in obsession. The repetition of pacing and break builds on the down tempo into a culminating panic under the weight of body and the gravity of obsessive love. Siken has, within Crush, created a world of love and death, of paranoia, where voices drift in and out, where the self questions its other aloud, causing disbelief in the fact of the world even as it builds around us into existence.
December 5, 2020
Ahh, this was so beautiful, I feel 39% gayer after reading this. Review to come!
June 2, 2018
it’s fitting that this book is called crush with how it crushes you and then you’re left lying on your bed at 3am wondering who you were before you knew these words.
in other words, it was fucking amazing.
in other words, it was fucking amazing.
May 14, 2021
I'd seen this book quoted all over, and I really looked forward to reading it because of those quotes, which I quite liked, but those few that I'd read before even opening the book were almost the only quotes I liked after completing it.
I liked the first poems the most, but I'm not sure whether it's because I did like them or because I was still optimistic about the book. After a few poems you notice the repetition pretty early on. I figured it was a reoccurring theme type thing, which I usually grow fond of, but it kind of felt like saying the same thing over and over. After the first few poems it lost me until the second to last poem which I liked in a weird-dream-sequence kind of way, but even that dragged on just a little too long.
The poems just sort of beat you over the head with the same imagery... and it isn't that I am adverse to imagery of blood, bones, death, gravel rocks and roads, bruises and ruin, etc. They were used so often, though, and I think any edge that initially came from them was lost when they became familiar from repetition.
But a lot of people really really love the book. I guess for the most part I'm realizing that I maybe grew out of it before I had the chance to read it.
I liked the first poems the most, but I'm not sure whether it's because I did like them or because I was still optimistic about the book. After a few poems you notice the repetition pretty early on. I figured it was a reoccurring theme type thing, which I usually grow fond of, but it kind of felt like saying the same thing over and over. After the first few poems it lost me until the second to last poem which I liked in a weird-dream-sequence kind of way, but even that dragged on just a little too long.
The poems just sort of beat you over the head with the same imagery... and it isn't that I am adverse to imagery of blood, bones, death, gravel rocks and roads, bruises and ruin, etc. They were used so often, though, and I think any edge that initially came from them was lost when they became familiar from repetition.
But a lot of people really really love the book. I guess for the most part I'm realizing that I maybe grew out of it before I had the chance to read it.
May 6, 2023
terrifically raw, dark, glimmering beautiful. i'm regretful that i'm not currently in a place where i can process such raw passion and anguish and aching (both aching as in longing and aching as in hurting). it's something that you need to be in the right emotional place for, to be present for feelings as vivid as these. i'll have to revisit this someday.
favorites: "litany in which certain things are crossed out," "visible world," "a primer for the small weird loves," "you are jeff."
favorites: "litany in which certain things are crossed out," "visible world," "a primer for the small weird loves," "you are jeff."
February 17, 2020
A poetry collection inconsolable of its particular homosexual aching and desire, Crush grinds words into a cup of caffeine-infused affection. Whilst it also traverses realisations and remembrances throughout the complications of same sex attraction, it is insatiably hungry for love and the many faces it dons. It ravages it with kisses until it's bruised. It leaves. It comes back. And there is a cyclic element amongst the relationship/s this collection macerates into nimble physical proclamations. At times sweet, on other times bitter, much bland on others and unfortunately never a perfect cup, there is an interesting touch of tenderness in the corners of its coarseness. But similar to any caffeinated drink, if taken in excess, Crush palpitates into a ramble of overlapping emotions, eroticism, and words with only nearly achieving any kind of infectious poetic vibrancy it probably aims for. It is fairly lovely but can feel overtly long-winded and repetitive. Two poems are added to my favourites nevertheless: Visible World and I Had A Dream About You.
Excerpts from some poems I really liked:
"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it."
— from Scheherazade
"History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
History is a little man in a brown suit
trying to define a room he is outside of.
I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours."
— from Little Beast
"You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that,
and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy
but tell me
you love this, tell me you’re not miserable."
— from Seaside Improvisation
Excerpts from some poems I really liked:
"Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it."
— from Scheherazade
"History repeats itself. Somebody says this.
History throws its shadow over the beginning, over the desktop,
over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
History is a little man in a brown suit
trying to define a room he is outside of.
I know history. There are many names in history
but none of them are ours."
— from Little Beast
"You wanted happiness, I can’t blame you for that,
and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic when it blathers on about joy
but tell me
you love this, tell me you’re not miserable."
— from Seaside Improvisation
April 11, 2022
"Sunlight pouring across your skin, your shadow
flat on the wall.
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
You had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
You raised your hand to your face as if
to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.
The light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through."
The stunningly intimate photograph on this anthology's cover is where my initial interest lay and I was not disappointed by the just as raw contents that lay underneath it. This powerful collection of poems is extravagant and erotic, confrontational and confused, bloody and brutal, ferocious and feral. Siken delivers something so unapologetic that it feels like his soul delivered up to the reader in the form of paper and ink.
"Do I have to stick my tongue in your
mouth like the hand of a thief,
like a burglary, like it’s just another petty theft? It makes me tired,
Henry. Do you see what I mean? Do you see what I’m getting at?
I swear, I end up
feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search
my body for the scars, thinking Did he find that one last tender place to
sink his teeth in?
I know you want me to say it, Henry, it’s in the script, you want me to say
Lie down on the bed, you’re all I ever wanted and worth dying for too...
but I think I’d rather keep the bullet."
flat on the wall.
The dawn was breaking the bones of your heart like twigs.
You had not expected this,
the bedroom gone white, the astronomical light
pummeling you in a stream of fists.
You raised your hand to your face as if
to hide it, the pink fingers gone gold as the light
streamed straight to the bone,
as if you were the small room closed in glass
with every speck of dust illuminated.
The light is no mystery,
the mystery is that there is something to keep the light
from passing through."
The stunningly intimate photograph on this anthology's cover is where my initial interest lay and I was not disappointed by the just as raw contents that lay underneath it. This powerful collection of poems is extravagant and erotic, confrontational and confused, bloody and brutal, ferocious and feral. Siken delivers something so unapologetic that it feels like his soul delivered up to the reader in the form of paper and ink.
"Do I have to stick my tongue in your
mouth like the hand of a thief,
like a burglary, like it’s just another petty theft? It makes me tired,
Henry. Do you see what I mean? Do you see what I’m getting at?
I swear, I end up
feeling empty, like you’ve taken something out of me, and I have to search
my body for the scars, thinking Did he find that one last tender place to
sink his teeth in?
I know you want me to say it, Henry, it’s in the script, you want me to say
Lie down on the bed, you’re all I ever wanted and worth dying for too...
but I think I’d rather keep the bullet."
November 5, 2022
We were in the gold room where everyone
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
- Snow and Dirty Rain
Review to follow.
finally gets what they want, so I said What do you
want, sweetheart? and you said Kiss me. Here I am
leaving you clues. I am singing now while Rome
burns. We are all just trying to be holy. My applejack,
my silent night, just mash your lips against me.
We are all going forward. None of us are going back.
- Snow and Dirty Rain
Review to follow.
March 29, 2022
This collection kills my soul in the best way.
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