Too Much Flesh and Jabez

Too Much Flesh and Jabez
__________________

“No drama queens, please.”
—Edmund White, “City Boy”

I suppose I should—
Admit that I wanted him
My cute kid-brother

I wanted something—
Tres exquisitely prolonged
Like Epilepsy

His perfect body—
Was an end in itself but
I wanted more

A long drawn-out spaz—
A hare-lipped gimpy lover
A dumb kid-brother

“The New York Times
Book Review had asked
Me to review his “Island People”
—Edmund White, “City Boy”

Drama queen writer—
Opaque Faulknerian style
A charmless loser

Dodgy modernist—
Elaborately POMO
Southern Gothic spleen

I’d fallen from Grace—
Much too much pot and cocaine
Maligned by cruel fate

The shallows of life—
Sad deep South malignancy
Queerly vulnerable

A dreadful lover—
Picking up his chicken leg
Worms on my fingers

__________________________

“So uneven it could
be called a corduroy
road to perdition”
—Edmund White, “City Boy”

I couldn’t help it—
That’s the way I wrote novels
Aghast at the world

Atlanta was burning—
Rhett Butler abandoned me
The Deep Door South was doomed

Butterfly McQueen—
Didn’t know a fuckin thing
About baby boys

Oh Lordly, Lordly—
What’s a Dixie Girl to do?
Be a novelist?

___________________

“She was ennuyante of stature.”
—Edmund White, “City Boy”

Like Miss Andre Gide—
I relived Counterfeiters
Such duplicity

Total exposure—
Of myself with the technique
Of concealing things

Mise-en-abyme queen—
Using many points of view
To conceal myself

Writing a novel—
Exploring possibilities
And insincerities

Divining how to—
Use insincerity
To cover-up things