Phil Spotswood is a queer poet living in Louisiana. His most recent work can be found in tenderness, yea, Five:2:One, and Tagvverk. He is the recipient of the 2017 William Jay Smith MFA Poetry Award judged by Daniel Borzutzky, and co-edits Cartridge Lit.
Five Elegies for St. Joseph
Dear white lily, I want
the suck of your roots
to stream back into your skull
with the force of a turbine
run by rats
Shitstorm guzzler,
rapture the membrane
tension with polyphonic verb!
Rip the cradle from the crotch,
dear, set it as tender undulation
& maxim meltdown
urethra explosion in a sealed-off pit
What cell mass
could drip to into what
faint halos could stich themselves
outward into scuttle & grope
The circle breaks, dear lily,
you just have to bend it looping over
& over
*
Yesterday was shirtless
running pale & limp
at the top of a hill
I drifted off with another
into compression jelly, glutton chop
invisibilia : two bodies
disappearing, me continuing
down the hill; learned survival
magic, cheap
trick
watch me binge & burn
every man a vapor bloat
Show me false
integrity, the kind
that ruptures, doesn’t swallow
every face it sees
but learns to sway and give
Dear threshold historia,
every word, every poem I write
is a stand-in for the next;
what will it take to break you
into pink confetti
Yesterday is pitched
nighttime running toward car headlights
ascending my downward slope,
moment grown luminous before me
Welcome holy verve, it’s mile thirteen
& every pore is tilted to collapse
*
after The Nativity by Guido de Siena
The mountain’s anus is a burrowing capsule of the sky
and I can’t sit by w/ you, wistful obscurant,
as morning slicks its way into the cradle
If proximity to a womb is all
it takes to retch a timeline
then I want to tune every orifice
to the inexplicable sound
of termite fever
If I bathe you red
could your corpse molten
& sickly transmogrify
the cave, sky, bull dung & white ibis
into ersatz oscillation–
spirit
spasm
spit
Dear figure skulking around
the corner, tell me who it is
you’re meeting behind
the dumpster; I want your post-
vision, post-aureole pop
to shake the whole
damn frame
Whatever dewy ghost
told you to keep quiet & permeate
as slow chains of absence
never drifted through
a crowded street linking
crowded streets & the red
jostle
of extending bodies
*
after The Marriage of the Virgin by Raphael
Dear computation spurted
from the mouth
of a digital sky
The eye of the temple is hollow
a golden path
sloping mountainside to you, barefoot
& poised or impaled
ramrod flower-burst
This valley a circuit threatened
w/ red pulse buckled–
cloistered coin
splintered youth
or muted dowry slowly
filling a face w/ placid water
Dear reluctance caught
in fractal virtue, how to code
you out of this, dismember
avenue airway veins
& set you all afloat– nonchalant
chalice chatter
shattered rim
& bulge of gold
unstitched balcony flow down
counter-current malformation
every face
of christ splattered
rent red red
*
I’m breathing
normal again, though
normal airways circumnavigate
a mountain-shaped depression
in the lungs, rooting
the gut, till the tar issues back, apex hierarchy
down the throat & colors you
pierced-heart-sunrise
my hackneyed valentine
I want to break the word,
snap its neck & the stalks of everything it burgeons
rip out the spine of time
that grew this tumor, no calculation,
just a volatile fling that arcs &
extends a distance, never lands
But it would founder
my body, also, & I’m not ready
to leave, still have
small performances to alter,
strangers to meet
& maybe it’s not destruction,
total, because really what a
sham, nothingness,
but a folding into, so
that I can finally live
with the terrorock
& you, who never had
a choice, either
Dear mountain-seat,
stay where you are, please
it’s time to
examine your tendons & suggest
soft salt breakdowns
tearings to slip notes
on a mutiny in;
the plan
is to introduce your cells with desire for everyone else
in the room
terraforming puddles of liquid crystal filth