CAMERON MARTIN

THE EGG

Couples Therapy was playing on the massive TV.

I was dog sitting for a man I can't stand

staying in his smart house, largely

bookless (Don't fuck 'em! says John

Waters, but I did), watched

by Alexa and Canary and by

the doorknobs, probably.

Needed the money, to pay the rent.

I was lying in his "Lovesac,"

naked from the bottom 

of the shirt down

rubbing my balls

because they're smooth

because I shaved them

because you should touch what you love

because if I have to have 

an audience they can deal with it.

Some man on Grindr told me that 

I should have “the surgery”

“mutilate my cock” “submit” “be

a real trans.” I like my eggs best

soft boiled, scalped

and stood up in egg cups. Trembling.

The yolks poked 

churned sopped up 

with toast cut to fingers, buttered, 

fatted before 

going fatter 

then turning

to mush in the mouth 

and swall-

owed down slow. 

I like to crack them

less. I do not want 

a mess, though I make

a mess of everything. 

Dishes in the sink

for months, etc. I am too

good at ignoring what I don't 

want to look at. [quietly emotional

music]: People do better

with the truth than without it,

says the couples therapist.

There's a carton of eggs 

mostly full in the fridge 

of the man I can't stand

expired since December.

I could have touched them

crushed them 

wet and 

open

and/or 

not.

NO PARKING IN ALLEY

You aren’t a different person on an airplane,

in an airport, whatever the effect of altitude

on taste buds (tomato juice suddenly, somehow,

delicious), or waiting for the “family restroom,”

the chance to sit and piss and shit ungawked.

Often you opt back into manhood, keeping

your arms and legs inside the stall at all times,

thinking, unfortunately, of Larry Craig, his

wide stance and eleven-hundred unprocessed

boxes containing his every official utterance 

in a basement back in Idaho. Back in Idaho,

you get the good quiche and coffee from 

the cringe café, not begging but asking

the question if you can bring yourself 

to the appointed place at the appointed time to

experience regularly scheduled enrichment.

Pointedly, you feel the utmost poignancy and

interest at the pinnacle of slippage, somewhere

between then and now, where you were and where

you’re meant to be, there and here and

elsewhere, circles and circles and: the dance that only after 

becomes the very last, the Polaroid’s delayed release of light, 

the sense of lurking, overstaying your welcome, being excess 

to desires and requirements. You'd call it liminal 

if you thought you wouldn't get laughed at.

Backwards then forwards then backwards again.

All you really want's a rest along some shadowed 

corridor, a velvety dereliction beside the dented 

dumpster, its hoard of spoiled food, the drums 

on the path to the park FOR COOKING OIL ONLY, 

signage at its single-minded schtick again. 

The cinder blocks and rusty fence posts catty corner 

from the semi-permanent tent encampment hidden 

from the street, police, by trees. Heat leaching

from your ears, red with wind and cold, into open air. 

The need for secrecy and order up against the inevitable

way things break, people talk—not like a dog 

with a bone, but an actual dog nosing toward a carcass 

tipped from a trash can, its rib cage and spinal column 

on display, right here, right now, just for you. The dog’s 

unleashed, unleashable, literal. All animal, his shit shat 

directly on a briar patch, suspended just above the mud, 

leaves, muck, between floating and falling, air and dirt. What is and 

what's to come.

CAMERON MARTIN