boccadoro

by Damon Hubbs

The train conductor in Stockbridge looks like Henry Miller

when Henry Miller learned to say amen. I’m reading Seasons of Sacred Lust

in the bell tower of a church with Ray and Fasha the Dog. It’s summer,

which is violence and the sacred and Greylock gin on the patio

of The Red Lion Inn. All the girls are Buddhists. Slippery and

mysterious. “The sac of Rome is a shitty name for a boat,” someone says.

I remember the time I touched The Swing when it was on loan at The Met.

Drinking tallboys with the putto my lover waited in the bushes to catch

my parted shoe. For years I couldn’t get the grass stains off my knees.

I write a love letter to Theresa. To you. To Vlada Boutique. We rondel

endlessly, rococo with the ladyboys. Steal flowers from the Botanical gardens.

You’re dating a painter named Khaki Jack but maybe that isn’t his real name.

False starts, delays, divagations, it’s enough to set your jaw on edge. Still,

we restore love. Caroline has been reading palms since she was five. She

has a booth at the Elm St. co-op. “You’re overcoming metaphysics,” she

says. My toothbrush hangs in her medicine cabinet modeling Christ’s example.

I spend the day on boats and balconies overlooking other boats and balconies.

The sun sets in agony. This is around the time Tom Snarsky published the poem

“American Philosophy” and Theresa was obsessed with The Pictures Generation

—revolvers, cameras, cakes, houses, Sprüth Magers, social science fiction and

the space between the original and the copy. It’s a good poem, dense with language

and looking; I read it twice, maybe three times; it’s like twenty hands pulling a

squeegee through the blood of the sun, or eating away at one of Paul Blackburn’s

big steaks after a baseball game. This is around the same time I was writing love

letters to Theresa, you, the ladyboys, Fragonard, Stockbridge. This morning it’s warm

and pleasant. Amen. I’m jolted alive. Thrown in the landscape. No more doped wine.

My bloodwork is good. I’m no longer reading French historians and literary critics,

no more erotic poetry. Golden lips and romance languages aren’t for me. It’s enough.

It’s enough. It’s enough to know that Anaïs Nin would never dream of fucking Tao

Lin.

Photo of Damon Hubbs

BIO: Damon Hubbs is a poet from New England. He's the author of the full-length collection Venus at the Arms Fair (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). He has also published four poetry chapbooks, The Day Sharks Walk on Land, Coin Doors & Empires, Charm of Difference, and The Railroad Poems.

From avant-garde journals to indie sleaze rags, Damon’s poems have been featured in a wide variety of publications, including: Revolution John, BRUISER, Dark Winter Lit, Broken Antler, Apocalypse Confidential, Farewell Transmission, The Gorko Gazette, Spectra, Book of Matches, Otoliths, Utriculi, Ranger Magazine, Don’t Submit!, Dreich, Cajun Mutt Press, Yellow Mama, Horror Sleaze Trash, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, The Beatnik Cowboy, Roi Fainéant, Bullshit Lit, Urban Pigs Press, Misery Tourism, Antiphony, The Argyle Literary Magazine, Suburban Witchcraft Magazine, Sparks of Calliope, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, the engine(idling, Synchronized Chaos, and more.