POEM OF THE MONTH: JULY
THEME: HOT
A Bubbling in the Sty by Derek Mueller
American Erotica
william o'neal ii
It’s all alright darling
drop your act. Say that you know
what you want.
Pull the toy shaped like a hand
gun from the night-
stand & open your mouth
like a baby dove waiting
for morning to come.
Your lover enters
from the bathroom right before
you pull the trigger.
She replaces the barrel
with her thumb.
This is what it means to be
American. To always want something
in your mouth. Virginia
Slim. Toothpick. Golden
reed. Say that you know
what you want. Stand
at the top of the tower.
Monument of indulgence.
Shrine of desire.
Drop your panties
to the wind. Baby,
this is the sound
of an American. A cooing.
A suckle. A land
flowing with milk
& money.
Say that you know
what you want. Someone
beautiful to notice
your swollen bulb
of suffering. Someone
to place the tip
of their thumb
on the pistil
of your tongue & watch
as you massage the red
plum hidden beneath
the bough of your bush.
A ripening. Someone
to say good job
& half-heartedly want you
to stay. Pull up
your boot straps
like a good western
boy & ride off. Prodigal
son on horseback
chugging across state
lines. The stars lining
the sky like a Christian
Louboutin belt.
This is what it means to be
American. A game
of role play where you act
as your own Messiah. Running
a great distance towards
an unending dark
blue sky. Hoping
it leads back
to your childhood.
An eternal American
summer. Green
pools. Boiled pigs.
White girls with pink
tans. Mouth full
of juju bees.
william o’neal ii is a writer from the American South. Their work has been recognized & published by The Journal, The Talon Review, The WB Yeats Society of NY, A Worldwide Magazine, Emory University, The Kennedy Center, & Cave Canem. william is a current poetry research fellow at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Contributor’s Note
I have been thinking a lot recently about the implications of moving through the world as an American & what that means for the inner workings of our hearts. This poem is part of a larger collection I am working with the same name, “American Erotica.”
Considering René Girard’s philosophy on mimetic desire, & the idea that our wants are influenced by what other parties deem desirable, this collection explores what Americans are conditioned to grow up wanting: money, beauty, independence, convenience, objective truth, prosperity, freedom. This poem centers the physical body as a method of exploring those themes. The repetition of the demand “Say that you know / what you want” is to confess that you are an American. It is to confess that you know nothing except how to want. This poem is an erotic scene that begins in despair & moves towards freedom—a freedom that feels synonymous to loneliness. It is a journey towards ecstasy, & the alienation you feel after waking beside someone who does not see you for who you are.
I recently read a poem by Mark Strand that says, “Everything always larger and more / Elusive, with the weight of the future saying / That I am only what you are, but more so.” A poem is a space to slow down & live briefly in the smallness of your life, without the exhaustion of being an American hustler. A poem, a painting, a song is an antithesis to the current insatiable & destructive spirit of this nation, which is part of the reason why the arts are currently being undermined & attacked. This poem is a space to consider the eroticism of going back & searching for the smallness of one’s life.
There are many people who have a deep shame in being American right now. The modern tragedy of trying to love others through an American ideology is that the long-held doctrine of “love your neighbor as yourself” negates itself when the President is encouraging the inhumane detainment & deporting of immigrants, physically & spiritually building walls, constructively diminishing the meaning of the word “love” in a culture of post-truth. The tragedy of loving as an American, today, is to try & do everything right & still find yourself chasing an “unending dark / blue sky.” I am constantly asking, “What parts of my Americanness must I denounce to be whole?”
—william o'neal ii
Editor’s Note
We received nearly 500 poems for this month’s theme (‘Hot’) and william o’neal ii’s “American Erotica” indeed came in like a heatwave. This poem is sweltering, smart, devastating, seductive, and sharp as hell. “Say that you know / what you want,” it commands, and suddenly you’re in it.
This is a poem that understands the body as metaphor, battlefield, soft machinery of desire. It’s about sex, yes, but also about what it means to want anything as an American — power, beauty, love, absolution. I love how o’neal moves from high eroticism to cultural critique without ever losing the poem’s heat: “A land / flowing with milk / & money.” That line alone is a thesis, a provocation, a spit-shined mirror.
“American Erotica” pulses with mimetic desire, loneliness, theater, prayer. It begins in the bedroom and ends galloping toward a mythic American dusk, dust trailing behind like a goddamn fever dream. It asks: What part of our hunger is ours, and what was sold to us in a shrink-wrapped fantasy of freedom? None of us have the answer.