Poetry by Andrea Rexilius

Poem for Jack Kerouac

 

 

I am the first enemy of Jack Kerouac. He is mentioned again at a reading and I think to myself, “It’s like the Beats created an even more elaborate machine to destroy women. It’s called quote/unquote Buddhism.”  I remember the first time I read The Dharma Bums. I knew Japhy Ryder was Gary Snyder and I kind of loved him. Mainly because I identified with his mountain goat, road-tripping character, and because I saw him often in the bookstore I frequented in Nevada City. Then I got to the part with the tantric sex orgy and the vapid women and I thought, fuck you Jack Kerouac. Fuck you Japhy Ryder. When I was 16, I also loved Henry Miller. I know. I was so troubled. But The Tropic of Capricorn was mysterious and sexy. Then again, the line about the woman as a piece of meat on the end of a dick was troublesome. All I remember now of these books is how the women were represented. I refuse to read them again. I am so glad I eventually discovered Diane di Prima and Simone de Beauvior and Gertrude Stein. I’m so glad I no longer teach at a school that revels in the works of those men. Yes, I am a woman and yes I have a cunt, but I am a writer, so none of that belongs to the ilk of men.

 

 

Poem for Jinkx Monsoon

 

When I think about Jinkx Monsoon

I think about that Kenneth Koch poem

about the flower in my genitals and the lion

in my genitals and the song in my dove. It’s the

most perfect love poem I’ve ever read.

I have a man in my hands I have a woman

in my shoes.  No enjambment. No line break.

I have a red-headed narcoleptic in my heart

I have a monsoon on my insides.

 

I have a wish in my wishbone for poets

and drag queens to fall in love. I am

Jack Spicer I am Divine I am Marie

Antoinette. The call of the whippoorwill

reminded me of you.  I have a landmark

decision in my lip-sync. This is the matter

with me. But I lack calm I lack ribbon.

 

The active ingredient in it is a touch.  I have

glitter in my head. I have dreams in my pantoums.

Whatever is it that has led all these vaudevillians to you?

.

.

.

 

Andrea Rexilius’ publications include three books of poetry: New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine, 2014), Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine, 2012), and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011), as well as the chapbooks, Séance (Coconut Books, 2014), and To Be Human (Horseless Press, 2010). She works as a Program Coordinator and Faculty Mentor for the Mile-High MFA in Creative Writing at Regis University. She also teaches poetry classes at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver.