Tuesday poem #226 : Julia Polyck-O’Neill : I’m a rack of lamb.

I’m a rack of lamb.

I’m Eileen Myles on a date with a couple, but you’re just you.

I’m Eileen Myles working at Paragon,

and you’re Grace writing me a poem.

You like that reading Marx made me sad.

You like it that I worked somewhere like Marx describes.

You like that I’m bourgeois but can relate to the lumpenproletariat. You like that the chances of me running away are minimal.

I’m Eileen Myles giving you a handjob under the table

across from a dead-looking Belushi.

I’m Eileen Myles taking pills and you’re a couple

feeding me pills.

Julia Polyck-O’Neill is an artist, curator, critic, and writer. She is a doctoral candidate in Brock University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities program (Culture and Aesthetics), where she is completing a SSHRC-funded interdisciplinary and comparative critical study of contemporary conceptualist literature and art in Vancouver. She has taught in contemporary visual culture in the department of Visual Arts at the Marilyn I. Walker School. She also curates the award-winning Border Blur Reading Series in St Catharines. Her writing has been published in Feminist Spaces, Tripwire, The Lamp, Ottawater, Fermenting Feminisms (a project of the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology), and The Avant Canada Anthology, and her debut chapbook, femme, was published in 2016 by above/ground press.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan