LOUDSPEAKER:: Poetry by Parker Thornton

Writing

Jan 5

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

Pandemic Poem 6

A little thing I like to do
in the Year of Our Lord 2020
Is make a Vegan White Russian
at 4:37 pm, just after my Mom suggests
I go ahead and land my dream job
so I don’t have to work at a preschool anymore.

I got a COVID test today.
The way the worker was so cavalier
with plunging the swab down my nostril
made me horny, a little.

What I wouldn’t give to go to a discotheque.
Thank god almighty
I made out with so many people
Back when you could.

Pandemic Poem 11

I may have just made
the perfect scrambled eggs
which is encouraging, so I recant
the bad idea I had this morning
to try my dog’s Prozac

The most gay thing about me
is that once I got myself off while
sitting on a swinging bench in a front yard,
reading “The Argonauts”

The least gay thing about me
is that I find the movie “Carol” dreadfully dull.

Pandemic Poem 24

Update: the neighbor, who
my girlfriend and I referred to
as the Tig Notaro lesbian
is growing out her hair
and is now the Miranda July lesbian

Quarantine is: feeling rejected
when the mail carrier skips
your flag-up mailbox, even though all that was in there
was an envelope marked
“return to sender (wrong address)”

Pandemic Poem 25

Every time I listen Nico I think about the autumn day
that Andrew walked into the room
took a deep sigh
tossed a scarf over his shoulder
and said “it’s finally Nico weather”

Lately I’ve felt a distinct nostalgia
for the smell of my Dad’s BO

Pandemic Poem 14

It’s the pandemic, & I forget myself
In the absence of an audience

I can only write poetry when
I imagine it being pored over
by a grad school student
Once I am humous
and my work is posthumous.
I can almost hear them say
“Her work wasn’t appreciated in her time”

To feel alive, sometimes, is to
eat salad all day and drink all night.

Pandemic Poem 21

I got bit on the armpit
by a donkey last night.

Ever since I gave him
some scraps of sweet potato
on our second day at this AirBnB
he’s been aggressive, expectant

The coffee here is sludgy, diner-style
I sort of revel in its shittiness
I’m such a snob, usually
It’s nice to be humbled
by physical dependency on a drink

Pandemic Poem 22

I like therapy because
it’s such an intimate one-woman show
I like my therapist because
she is gorgeous and I want to impress her.
Her lips are big and full and pouty,
I like to watch them move as she tells me what to do.
I want to tell her
she can be meaner to me.

Somebody on a podcast’s therapist told him he didn’t have anxiety
So much as he had anger,
but anxiety is the more comfortable emotion.
I’ve thought about that a lot.

Pandemic Poem 19

Is there anything more vulnerable
than holding out your phone
to your hairdresser, delicately,
like it’s a little bird, to show them
a picture of how you’d like to look.

The feeling of thinking, “Her.
I want to look like Her.”

And the kindness with which
they never say “Oh honey,
you’re never gonna look like her.

Pandemic Poem 12

This is going to sound fake, but
My brother-in-law has nerve pain
in his testicles, so over Christmas break I drove him to Winter Park, FL
for a surgery where they inserted
a tiny ball of ice into his scrotum
to cryo-kill the damaged area.

“Avant Concierge Urology” had a nice lobby with a plaque that said “dream” and a Christmas tree decorated with festive orbs.

The pharmacist who filled the pain pills prescription, afterward, was a cute, clean cut, friendly guy.
He turned around and revealed himself to have
a little rat tail, gathered into a tiny bun.

Pandemic Poem 8

I think I’ll try Whole 30
just to feel something

Lately my fantasies extend only so far
as to imagine what types of soups I’ll make this month.

Pandemic Poem 7

The more books I buy
The less I read them.

A friend once said “when you buy a book,
you’re really buying the idea
that you’ll have time to read it”
and I agreed.

Time is all I have now,
and the only things I read
are subtitles on British TV shows
and the entirety of the internet.

Pandemic Poem 5

I’ve been wearing a purple cat-eye
And sweating in my sleep-
do I work hard in my dreams?

Recently I had a phase where
I aspired to be the first living person
To cure her depression by
having yet another cup of coffee

I’m working in the scroll mine
7 days/week til my fingers go numb.

There is nothing to dread
but dread itself.
There is only the grocery store
to look forward to.

Pandemic Poem 1

My ZZ plant is doing quite nicely
Thank you for asking.

I quit being an artist
To focus on doing the dishes—
It’s hard work but so rewarding
To do one tangible thing.

I’m sitting here in a stupid tye-dyed T-shirt
from Wal-Mart that says “WORK OF ART”
Across the the chest,
Wishing I wasn’t feeling like a failure
in Clarkston, Georgia.
Wishing I was feeling like a failure somewhere more poetic
Like that time I cried sitting on the cobblestone streets of Paris.

Pandemic Poem 3

“Vibe check!” She shouts to her dogs.

I chaperoned a plumber yesterday, he
was fixing the water pressure at my house
for five hundred and fifty eight dollars.
I couldn’t have invented a better character,
he had: a flip phone; a buttcrack; a Cajun accent.
Apropos of nothing, he told me the story of his friend’s murder.
Run over by a motorcycle.
Or run over by a car while riding on a motorcycle.
I couldn’t tell and
didn’t ask for clarification.

“Vibe check!” She yells from a mountain; listens for the echo

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City premiered last week and it’s got
more pathos than Greek mythology, is
more poignant than Gray Gardens, is
more more more more more is more.
The woman who married her step-grandfather accused another woman of smelling “like hospital”—
a modern Hera striking down an opponent,
Through the power of prose.

“Vibe check!” She writes on the internet, gets 27 likes.

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