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matt constantino is a reformed burnout, femme top, sissy poet, and law student of undetermined revolutionary potential. they've been published before, and reader, they’d like it again. nyc, but also pdx. they tweet at @horsebabies, don’t they?

This poem was longlisted for the 2020 Peach Gold in Poetry with guest judge ALOK.

1 poem

by matt constantino

 

Editor's note: We recommend reading this piece on desktop due to its unique formatting.

come on over

the rate of compensation for applying

          silicone adhesive to the lower abdomen

                    of christina aguilera had fallen to the hourly wage

          some two-thousand years after the birth of christ

a young homosexual is gluing the rhinestones

          in a sort of mandala to focus the viewer

                    on the navel in which a pear shaped diamond

          is perched upon an unseen hook so that christina

can perform the deflowering ritual

          for which she has rested the night

                    in the carefully gelated liquor so as to increase her laryngeal sensitivity

          to the hot serums with which she will scald the epiglottal flap

for the five minutes directly preceding her choking approximately

          one thousand granulated C notes into the camera

                    which will then transmit a signal to the children

          to place their hands and mouths in the hold positions

corresponding to a transaction of knowledge

          that predates the current, heavily depressed sexual marketplace

                    whereby the public consumptive tolerance inflates, inverse

          to the naïve erotics materially available

when i really could have used them. what i got was a translucent pvc belt

          and a receipt. i want sex

                   from the people i want it from, globally speaking, but not locally, and i mean to be

          a better lay, and i could’ve been

had i infinite resources and was somebody else. how’s that for nuance. in any case,

          give me some rope,

                    but i believe the last bag of good dick

          got snatched off the carousel at jfk

by the time christina donned the horrible laced vinyl pants to shake reproductively

          relevant flesh towards the lens, this is 2000, come! come on over

                    come on over, baby, this song you probably remember

          in the perfected iteration we call the single

opens on a single thematic E flat

          being pressed down on a piano with conviction

                    a trinity of christinae had been added to support the singular one

          on the ten notes of the first verse, come on over, come on over, baby

like most rituals follows a trajectory of intensifying

          simplicity leading to the decocted cultural demand, historically blood,

                    come and open the door, pleads the singular christina

          followed by the refrain of the trinity

as if to promise many doors behind and within the one,

          a promise of multiplicity

                    of what is unclear. a heavily deteriorated legacy of black church singing is here,

          so too a Spanish guitar, hesitant rapping over the question

of christina’s race, per usual it is hedged,

          as several -tinae buffet against your earhole that all they want is you,

                  but that what happens next is firmly inside the second person, which is to say me

          because to fuck christina here would comprise

a hideous subject object mistake at the gates of calabasas

          beneath which her E flat punches a dot

                    out of which the essential transposition of pop music would prolapse completely

          spelling out questions in the face of a totalizing desire, i see you doing it,

but don’t, cause her pussy

          already nearly falls out

                    on every E flat

          COME ON OVER

          (thud)

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