softboi season

oxford, 2019

o lesser cousin of the fuckboi, less likely a rower; o one who wears unwashed jumpers and mangles proust, cries into his cosmos and parades shorts even in december. i saw one of you coming down on high street, socks and sliders (both of which your breed have mansplained to me); and another nearly ran me over, bike basket filled with apollinaire and adorno, didn’t ring but sang an aria in warning; i nearly died. tell me why i can’t seem to shake the bad poets and wine boys, can’t find a single specimen who doesn’t play jazz to his cats at night or drinks in graveyards. even the physics boys! have taken up their austen and keats, have defied their classification, declaim historiographic metafiction from their labs, vibration/communication. yes; let me live free of mahler, liccs and bad kisses; your opinion pieces and union speeches; o all unfaithful vegans and vegetarians; can i say; enough?


Sonnet Which Is Not a Sonnet

oh oxford and your distinct lack
of chinatowns, your soggy stone
mornings and such english breakfasts,
the distinct lack of food other than
breakfast on weekends, lack of
sun, insulation, edible dumplings;
give me neon-glare, greenlit
sushi places, low-calorie, calorie-free
asian noodles; what can be more
asian than a noodle, more asian
than me; I – who cannot read
the chinese newsletter, the chinese
...