Jay McCoy
Distilling Ganymede
committing no crime but their own
wild cooking pederasty and intoxication
—Allen Ginsberg
You begin with full-bodied wine, cold-pressed
from blond twinks who blew and were blown
in the underground garage, bare-assed against cast iron
and concrete, writhing out of mind, out of sight
of bright Aldebaran tracking Seven Sisters, wandering
the Seven Hills. Savor succulent extract rimmed
from the gym-rat ginger’s faggot obsession for sinewy
musk seeping from carmine-colored Umbros glanced
askew on cedar benches in the basement steam
room of the Central Parkway YMCA. Simmer long
& hot over pyre with the silver-haired daddy discovered
beneath tin ceilings, smoking Reds, who fucked furiously
out of necessity, because of drunken desire being
caught alone outside Kaldi’s at the devil’s hour. Blend in
rough trade, if you dare, juicy from bath houses
by abandoned train tracks near the Olentangy, who left
you with twisted taut nipples and rancid residue of palm
prints stained on your cheeks. Boil them all slowly down
with the rolling bug chaser vociferously plowed
on the rooftop under unflinching gaze of Aquarius
and starry-eyed Aquila pausing pensive above
your Queen City. In the end, render every face blank
and every seraphim mouth mute. Leave bejeweled bodies
disjointed, unrecognizably reduced to purgatoried torsos,
to endless cock and balls, beneath a once-mortal moon
reflected in the glistening heady/sweet remnants.
Jay McCoy is the author of The Occupation (Accents Publishing, 2015). His poems have appeared in Blue Fifth Review, Kentucky Monthly, Kudzu, Naugatuck River Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and Still: The Journal. Jay holds an MFA in creative writing from the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University. He co-founded the Teen Howl Poetry Series as a venue for young poets to discover their own voice. Jay lives in Lexington, KY, where he is general manager of the Morris Book Shop and a writing instructor/consultant.
This poem appears in The Occupation.