These are the Linguistic Constructs that Make Joseph

by Joseph Hargraves

Have you ever been raped. Shut up. Outside things are beautiful. (Notice there is no comma after the word outside.) Our insides are gone. This is a cliché; so is rape when you’re not the one raped. The one. I dislike violence; but would kill-- have killed-- easily: I am large; I contain multitudes: An atheistic I pray.

I hate "A Chrous Line." I am gay. Gay men like show tunes. Which of the 2 previous sentences is a lie.

First Memory:

My mother running into living room in bra
and panties chased by my father in boxing shorts.
He caught her and threw her against the brick wall.
She followed him back into the bedroom.

Wasn’t it Tom Wolfe who said “Why has a perfectly good word like gay been applied to a group of people who are notoriously morose?” Why hasn’t anyone killed him.

Tonight a young Jewess told me that I am funny, but have no sense of humor. Why is rapist Tom Wolfe alive. I stopped shooting heroin because Tom Wolfe wanted me to overdose. I wash my hands after touching people because I don’t want to be infected by them. If Sigmund Freud were young and black skinned I would love him. I masturbate to thoughts of this hybrid. These words are in search of a construct named Joseph. I stole that sentence from you. I am a thief and logo-centric. Suck it.

Joseph Hargraves is a hermit living in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. His work has been published in The Guardian UK, The South African Times, New York Quarterly, Black-Listed Magazine, Zygote in my Coffee, Gutter Eloquence: Print & On-line, Fashion for Collapse, Durable Goods, Full of Crow, Asphodel Madness, Opium, and others.

SSFuck: If you could talk to any inanimate object, which would you choose?
Joseph: If I could talk to one inanimate object it would be the 100 year old engraving of Percy Bysshe Shelley hanging over my desk that I stole during a Bi-Polar Kleptomia day of fun.

SSFuck: What's one thing you did this week that you are proud of?
Joseph: I am proud this week that (though I am an atheist) I bought my 80 year old mother an Easter Basket filled with candy, a carton of cigarettes, a bottle of wine, 25 lottery tickets, Prayer Cards, Candy, and a Crucifix.. She will be surprised. I asked her for Vicodin- she refused!