for Deb<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n for Brigitte<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Dark Horse Portal for Deb Portal is a video gamewhere you wield a gun that shoots holes. One you go into, one you comeout of, each end delicately placed on the wall,facing one another in Escherian drama.In this portal, Mommy is a robot,and the robot puts you through hell. But let’snot talk tech. In life, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1546,"featured_media":310447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5557,5561,5966],"tags":[637,14,52,94,20,5681,48],"class_list":["post-310445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lit-mags","category-the-commuter","category-poetry","tag-games","tag-money","tag-music","tag-relationships","tag-sex","tag-trans-author","tag-travel"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nPortal<\/em> is a video game
where you wield a gun that shoots
holes. One you go into, one you come
out of, each end delicately placed on the wall,
facing one another in Escherian drama.
In this portal, Mommy is a robot,
and the robot puts you through hell. But let's
not talk tech. In life, disparate points
may also be connected. See: leading group fitness
classes back when my body could
hold my bottomless desire for pain; and ten
years later, seated on the floor of a \u201cdungeon\u201d
in a nondescript New Jersey Holiday Inn,
wrapped in the arms of the woman who\u2019s
just lavished bruises upon my ass and thighs.
But Nat, you're burying the lede.
This poem is really about \u201cDark Horse,\u201d Katy
Perry\u2019s 2013 \u201cwitchy and dark\u201d pop hit, the video
where she, uh . . . pretends to be Egyptian?
Yeah, that song. The one to which I pushed eager
bodies into cardio panic long ago.
It was an up-tempo remix, to be clear on this.
When I taught that track, I thought I would die.
Not dying was my fantasy of resistance: in
discipline, I'd avoid coming to harm.
And yet\u2014long since harmed\u2014it\u2019s 2025 and I hear
\u201cDark Horse\u201d in the dungeon, where someone's getting
fucked near a portable speaker. It's the
slower radio version, but the song is the same:
near-blackout gasping, ankles shot, shorts damp
with piss from tuck jumps, alive in the hell
I once gave myself. And now I\u2019m living in delicious
hell gifted to me by someone else.
This is not a game: I want
you to hurt me. Tell me I'm good, yes,
a good little boy\u2014no robot. Let me be abased by
longing. And when \u201cDark Horse\u201d plays again, take me
back through the hole. Be the one
who makes me feel it.
<\/pre>\n\n\n\nThe Ninety-Two Dollar Snail<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Standing in a gift shop you tell me the cost
of the snail in U.S. dollars instead
of Canadian, arguing it\u2019s less than initially supposed.
The purchase may be worth it\u2014and yet
this all feels like too much
desire. When I say that, what do you see?
Maybe the Nova Scotian
cafe we dined in days before, where I did agree
to buy a grab bag of \u201ctreasure\u201d and unpack
its broken contents. The reveal: a chipped mug
holding rainwater bracing
as the maritime air
I thought at first too cold
too cold to feel is how I\u2019ve felt for so long, after all
I thought I\u2019d forever be an icy geometry
who releases light refracted \u2019til it hides its hungry
source in clever ways.
Yet on this northern soil, studied designs
demand we cut up the rules of previous prototypes,
collage out something else: sunrise over
Prince Edward Island, puddles following
a brief storm. And muses:
one who wears the perfect feather earrings. Another
bearing throttled passion whose tunes I recognize.
If I had to describe it, I\u2019d say my life\u2019s been
a solo journaling game where I struggle to record
hurt before its bittersweet splendor is sacrificed
on the altar of new distractions\u2014
in this case, a felted snail who undermines all rationality
by being too sweet, too
soft, and though I\u2019ve desired
such transport before, this is the first time you
have stood by my side in view of the object in question
saying yes
there is a cost and I appreciate that it\u2019s high
but also I understand why
you want this and I think
\t\t you can have it. You
\t\t \t\t can have it.
<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"