Two Poems And An Anecdote

 by Joseph Hargraves

 

First Orgasm

 

My first orgasm was spontaneous, intense. I was in first grade in a very strict Catholic school. The Nuns carried hand "clickers" to make the clicking sound to audibly warn us of their awareness. We were each given a box of small squares, each with a letter on them, and a board to spell out words with the squares. The Nun left the room. I accidentally knocked my box of letters on the floor. I was terrified, picking them up as quickly as I could. I was on the floor when the nuns clicker went off, she was right outside the door. I started cumming, and cumming and picking up the letters.

 

Then every day I would drop my box of letters when the Nun left the room. It worked for a long time- but due to practice I got too fast at picking up the letters. I had to know there was a chance I would get caught. Knowing I was not facing a beating I stopped with the letters.

 

 

Pretty Legs

She walked the Park, eyes straight ahead- dress: ripped burlap and safety pins. She wore black boots coated with glitter. On the back calf of each leg she had a tattoo of one word of jail-house inked letters: Fuck You.

Writer's Block

 

I put my dick into her cunt hoping
to trigger a poem I go up and
down thinking of metrics biting nipples
my heart's beating faster she's looking at
her cigarettes I'm not into it she's
pretending to come I'm thinking about
onomatopoeia I fuck her hard
I'm doing this for art she's my 20
dollar muse I pull it out and tell her
to suck it she's a compliant Venus
I'm thinking about AIDS her pussy stinks
she has track marks on her legs I can't come
she looks bored I get up pay and decide
to go home jerk-off and write a sonnet

 

Joseph Hargraves has been reading French poetry and writing a small essay on Shakespeare's first 20 Sonnets. His favorite philosopher is Ludwig Wittgenstein, so he has been catching up on reading him. But one of his biggest joys this week was taking 250 milligrams of Oxy-Contin and re-reading Proust's "On Ruskin and Others" (now more frequently referred to as "On Reading." It is brilliant, and explains his relationship to reading, and lack of relationship to the living.

 

 

Three Poems

by Joseph Hargraves

He told me

that he had a very big
dick and liked
to beat
other men in the face
with it. He liked to
suck dick and to taste
cum even more than that.
He told me he liked licking
assholes. Sticking his
tongue between the cheeks
of a stranger's ass
was heaven.
But more than any of this
he said that he loved the song
"What's it All About, Alfie?"

Breasts

for Jennifer

You want yours bigger;
figure $8000 for the surgery.

You're a flat-chested feminist
who learned how to give great blow jobs
to distract men
from thinking
about small breasts.

If I had the money
I'd buy you a new pair.
But who knows,
you might die on the operating table
or wind up with a third tit
from traveling silicone.
You'd really have to give fantastic head then.

I like your breasts;
but you're the one
who carries them
everywhere.

Auto-Eroticism

how many hands
have been under
David’s fig leaf?

drops of sweat
on the marble chest
licked

by bored school boys
who looked up
from The History of Art

raising their hands
for permission to go
to the lavoratory

to bite the stone
tongue
while the leaf
drops

My name is Joseph Hargraves. I am a hermit living in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

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!