September 22, 2015

Sam Sax

LORAZEPAM

i don’t know shit
about the throat
of a sparrow.
how it can sing
& fly at the same
time. this couch
a sovereign object.
this back, a cadillac
on cinderblocks.
i stood once,
not for something,
rather, on my way
to the kitchen
for something to eat.
i bit into an apple, 
quite the achievement.
i wanted to be high
so lied to the doctor
about my anxiety,
the panic attacks
began then. naming
the disease made it
open like a primer
in my chest. wicked
mouth, peeling apple
after apple after reading
their skins are poison,
same goes for the seeds.
my man is a monster,
gunfire in the street.
praise the demigod
pharmacy for this
calm blood remedy,
which lets me do
nothing. my back
pinned to the cushion
again. my body, this
magnificent prison,
the ceiling above
bigger than any sky,
one a bird might fall
out of, singing         as it dies.

from Rattle #48, Summer 2015

__________

Sam Sax: “This poem’s from a series of drug sonnets—uncut rock pulled from the dark earth. I love the tension between the sonnet form and what potential is alive and writhing in the poem. I want my work to sing from the page—when I first fell in love with poetry is when a book came to life in my hands and head.” (website)

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December 26, 2014

Sam Sax

WHEN RESEARCHING PUBLIC SEX THEATRES FOR A POEM

you know you have to pay, right?
the marquee does its neon work to draw you
but your wallet will be punished.

the big man sits in his tiny booth with his big hands
you wonder if he finds you disgusting, or sees you
place the bill right in his palm. feel meat

through the currency. fantasize he might follow you in,
leave your eyes in his mouth. what is a poem worth, anyway?
ten dollars at the door? the long staircase? the soiled

cloth seats? who uses cloth seats anymore, anyway?
you read they hold disease better than mosquitoes.
you feel the swarm beneath as you sit.

each tiny needle sucking you down. it is dark
as you imagined. but you do not do what you imagined
you would do. your body does not transform

into something with more limbs. prehensile and guttural.
you sit. hands decorative silk napkins folded in pockets.
the whole of your skin shrinking away from its lineage.

that accordion history opening all its doors into the dark.
imagine the actors dead now, forever blazing in celluloid
before the swarms of us, forced into the same positions

over and over, the desperate cocaine buzzing through
the screen. the same angry hives, the overdubbed screams.
in the pause between films, you wonder again,

the cost of a poem. is it the man wearing a dark suit
beside you? his face a candle of legs? his wet and demanding
skin? the next film begins … and you reach out for him.

the mosquito’s feeding the blood forward into your hands.
your hands, outstretched as though you’d expect him to save
you. but he pulls away. he fades into the dark. then

when you open your mouth one strange voice stumbles out
after another. pandemic of hair yawns down your back, a thin
tail gasps out from between your hind legs. so you walk

down the long staircase. your body transforming into something
so much smaller. the big man’s hands now are five stories wide.
in the cab ride home, you laugh at how you tried to speak

a dying language. how naive and brave you were.
how ludicrous you believed you might find something holy
in sweat, a new way to talk about perversion or release

or the genealogy of desire. you do not tell anyone you went.
so tiny you could climb inside a stranger’s pocket. and you want to.
and you paid to. ugly swarm of cloth still folded in the blood.

isn’t it funny how you once believed nothing
in this whole world could disgust you?

from Rattle #44, Summer 2014

[download audio]

__________

Sam Sax: “A poem happens for me when I find something my body has a visceral response to that I don’t understand, that place where the body butts its head against the scripts written on it. When I write I put my thumb on that uncertainty and twist. This poem was born out of such twisting.” (website)

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March 8, 2013

Sam Sax

REUPTAKE INHIBITORS

a.

the first time i did cocaine liz let me borrow her rollerblades
my feet carved sharp wax grooves into the pavement.

i wore a headphone helmet. the wire dangling behind me like a giant
iguana tongue as the rhythm of the night thumped against my skull.

this is the rhythm of the night. night. night. night.
[oh yeah.]

each street lamp had a song burning in its eyes
the roads in rural ohio are rough
my legs vibrated a numbed bassline

each star was a pill in a rich lady’s medicine cabinet
the sky a pharmacy begging to be robbed

i skated so fast
i outran all my baggage

collapsed into a field of sheet music
i have yet to emerge from. my friends
wrapped me in a blanket of sweat
walked us home toward our warm beds

z.

the last time i did cocaine
is a different story altogether

it was denver pride as a strange man cut lines with a razor blade
that had developed a taste for his sad forearm. the port–a-potty

stank in time with the rumbling bass outside
his trousers smile opened into a scarecrow grin
my skull tried to free itself from its skin sarcophagus.

buried alive in that filth stink sauna
there were no wheels to run away on
no bed to wrap my bleeding heart in gauze
no air to calm these snakes twisting through hair
and no corona song to quiet the monster
rattling in my stomach

from Rattle #37, Summer 2012

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