Ron Kolm | I Am You as You Are Me

I Am You as You Are Me

 

 

When you said

You wanted to follow me

Everywhere I went

For an entire day

Videotaping

Every movement I made

It should have set off

An alarm somewhere

But I said, “Cool.”

 

Then you wanted

To film me

In my apartment

Doing routine chores

Dressed in your dad’s

Bright red pajamas.

They seemed clean

Enough, so I said,

“Let’s do it.”

 

So it should have come

As no surprise

When you phoned

And threatened my life

For a complicated

Imaginary wrong.

I guess you wanted

To rearrange the original —

Edit me in the flesh.

 

 

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Ron Kolm is a contributing editor of Sensitive Skin magazine and the author of several books including Swimming in the Shallow End (2020), A Change in the Weather (2017), and Night Shift (2016). His writings also appear in And Then, Feuerstuhl, Local Knowledge, The Opiate, and The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry (Thunder’s Mouth Press). A collection of his papers (some 35 cartons of correspondence, notebooks, objects, chapbooks, signed first editions and runs of literary magazines) was purchased by New York University and is now part of the Fales Library’s permanent archives.

Geer Austin | Beige Black Green

Beige Black Green

Sometimes I think about the beach,

how the sand with its soothing

bland color and soft texture

flows up from blue and warm water.

Nighttime lets light into black.

I had a black dream.

Black film without any white.

The memory of childhood summers

is green — meadows and lawns

and those endless rows of privet

clipped flat like an empty tabletop.


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Geer Austin’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Poet Lore, Manhattanville Review, Big Bridge, Plenitude, BlazeVOX, Boog City, and others. His short story, “Stuart Livingston Hill,” is a recent episode of the podcast A Story Most Queer. He has served as a judge in the PEN America Prison Writing Awards and the Bisexual Book Awards. He is the author of Cloverleaf, a poetry chapbook (Poets Wear Prada). He lives in New York City.