LOUDSPEAKER:: 2 Poems by Jason B. Crawford

Writing

Jul 28

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WUSSY is proud to present poetry by Jason B. Crawford.
If you would like to send in a writing submission, please contact Nicholas Goodly.

Notes on Turning Twenty Four

after Coming Out to your Fraternity Brothers

On my twenty-fourth birthday I kissed a boy
like a descending ocean floor.
That night, we danced in a basement to
Die Young and Starships until we were
so drunk, our legs could not hold all the joy
sitting in our lungs like a brimming glass of water.
The music was loud enough to end in a riot
cast of flung bricks. All we did that
night was smile. And laugh. And sing. And breathe.
Keep everything alive spinning clockwise.
I spent a whole summer in the darkest part
of a basement room at my dimly
lit fraternity house being a hushed Faggot.
But that night, we took back all
the crickets we could hide in our feet
and danced until their hum hit dawn.

from the mouth of the Beehive
for Vincint

His mouth a blushing rhythm of bees
spilling into the queer

desert of eardrums

Can you hear it?

All that honey brown

burnt to the roof of his tongue

That way his black turns butter
when his gums open
Split like dry folding dirt
in the small palms
of a glowing child

The boy listens to this buzz on repeat
paints himself in a glistening pollen

He too knows what it means
to be harvested for sap

A bruised black glitter hovering
over rusting bone

A frail child, limbs glued on
backwards

To be a slick pane of glass
jammed rigid into
the cathedral’s blistering tuff

How does molasses continue to dance
once it’s lit on fire?
This boy opens his jaws
vibrates until all of the windows

shatter into a raining cloud of dust
He names each flicker
of light his child
as it pulls towards our mouths

And dances wet and loud
and new
Like a hive of sugar being built again

Jason B. Crawford (They/Them) was born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut chapbook collection Summertime Fine is out through Variant Lit. Their second chapbook Twerkable Moments is due from Paper Nautilus Press in 2021. Their debut Full Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz will be out in 2022 from Sundress Publications.

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