how randall signs his emails
means he’s mine & vice versa dear randall i miss
you too bud & nights at the writers retreat
we talked booze & drank big ideas & i’m grateful
to read yr new awesome poem i love
how summer dies like an old loyal hound
so sorry to hear ur alone at the farm
how many days will yr wife be gone?
dear diary i rly think if i drove south
to his humid house w/whiskey in hand he’d
open the door & let me suggest we play
some fun drinking game w/a blindfold
& he’d let me see him
naked & i’d finally get to rub his fuzzy belly dear gods
of desire what is it about gazing on a man
so handsome it almost hurts
to look? the little-boy quality
in his voice? how he hangs on my words asking
how i know what i know?
dear therapist doesn’t it say in yr notes
i never chase straights? never mind toxic
masc & fragility panic it takes such damn energy to land
a play date with someone who likes licking dick
& sometimes a guy rubs against me & my mind
just attaches to sadness at that moment
a mud-splattered truck screeches up to the stop sign & I hear
twang twang of country guitars dear
randall i don’t rly like
dark liquor but bourbon’s what it’ll have to be
unless by chance you want as i want
you sober open-eyed longing pouring from yr mouth
into mine like a slow gush of spit
o muses i see now why all gays before me wrote
poems & made stage plays
dear self we are always honest w/each other
tonight i want to smell what randall’s
insides smell like not another night
of porn & nail polish remover working
to prolong my pleasure past my own
weak wrist so let’s get some shoes on
repeat after me
phone wallet keys
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Anthony DiPietro is a gay Rhode Island native who has worked in community-based organizations for 14 years. In 2016, he joined Stony Brook University, where he earned a creative writing MFA, taught college courses, and planned and diversified arts programming. He is now associate director of the Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts. A graduate of Brown University with honors in creative writing, his poems and essays have appeared in Notre Dame Review, Spillway, Washington Square Review, and others. He has been a finalist with Coal Hill Review, Naugatuck River Review, and The Tishman Review and has received fellowships from Aspen Summer Words, The Frost Place, and Key West Literary Seminars. His website is AnthonyWriter.com.
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