Recommended Reading: Pricks in the Tapestry by Jameson Fitzpatrick

A finalist for the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, Pricks in the Tapestry by Jameson Fitzpatrick is published by Birds, LLC. The editor is Sampson Starkweather. The winner of this prize will be announced on May 12. Here is a poem from this collection:

The Last Time I Got [ ]

I only let him
because he was sort of famous
and I wanted to say I had.

And the time before that,
because he was sort of straight
and I wanted to have my say—

and before that,
because he was there,
and he was going to.

Once Jacques got in,
where I wanted him,
but not all the way

and I wouldn’t let him
move it, I just
finished myself off and burst

into tears. It was fine,
I was fine, it was just a lot,
what Lot wouldn’t let

his neighbors do
to the angels. And he didn’t
even know they were angels.

Lot has nothing to do
with it, why I won’t.
Or can’t, if will isn’t the thing.

But isn’t the mind the body.
Isn’t mine, and what has
been done to it, and how:

plucked like a flower
versus
plucked like a string.