From “Couplets”
I tried to stay away. Could not. I’d turn to J
or T and say: Today’s the day
it stops. Nothing right should feel
this dirty, nothing real
this quicksilver and fanged. I kept thinking
of that show My Strange Addiction,
which was enjoying a comeback among my peers
in those months, despite its cancellation years
before, conceptual depravity,
and total exploitation of its cast. Reality
TV seemed newly relevant, I guess,
as life itself grew ever more fictitious,
perpendicular to time. Obsession was a subject
that obsessed me, regardless of its object,
but I hated to watch strangers being hurt
by theirs: doll-collecting, surgery, ingesting dirt
and glass. There was no joy depicted—
just decrepitude, abjection, musty rooms. If I directed
one, my show would air the pleasures
of compulsion, and be named Screw It, I’m Going to Text Her,
or Nothing’s Wrong, You’re Just in Love Again,
or True Life: Turning Twenty-Eight in Brooklyn.
Source: Poetry (December 2020)