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)