I Am Words

By Kyle Malinosky

Sex! Death! Existential crisis!

I Am Words is a search for identity, tackling a troubled past and the fear of a troubled future. Love, depression, childhood, family, and sexuality spiral upwards and outwards, wreaking havoc on the psyche. But, through poetry, discover a nuanced love for humanity in the face of its wickedness. The words in I Am Words are intense, tender, and often hilarious. It begs the question, Can we ever change into something we are not?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 13, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524544386

Book preview

Three – Oh – Two – Six – Four – Four – Five – Oh – Two – Oh

Hello

Hello

This is the State

Police

May I speak with

May I speak with

Love and threats

And letters

Up to here with

Messages in secret

Relationship

Who

Surveillance footage

You

Did you

Did you

Well did you

On the night of

Speak with

Speak with

Threat letters

And love

How long

Is he

Is he

Is he stable

Is he moving

Is he safe

Afraid of

Harassment

And love

And threats

Addresses and

The daily mail

Every day

Did you

Do you

On the sidewalk

In the driveway

Didn’t tell me that

Oh he didn’t tell me

With threats

And love letters

He said

He said so

He told me

The last time

The first time

On the night of

In the night

This is the State

Police

Harassing

Threats

And love

Love years ago

Years ago

Years ago

Didn’t end well

Fingerprints

On love letters

Love letters

Harassment letters

Threat letters

Letters

No

No

No

Well did you

Know

Know

Know

What is

Why letters

Why love

Why late night visits

Years later

Later

It’s been years

Officer

But still

But still

You.

ONE

Your Body is a Book

I open the warm clothing

To your backbone

The binding that

Keeps each limb together

Your chapters

I love so thoroughly—

Your musky thoughts

I inhale so deeply

For hours each night—

I read your hairs

Spell words on your skin

The soft white pages

I can barely turn

My Red Sheets

Off the black and glass

In my eyes there is only you

As the first time you smiled at me

How soft puppies look at food

How we danced in laughs and sweat

The first time we touched

I could not breathe

I was remade in your

Latin in your French

I dreamed of your body

Your feet were fire

I had to wet

Your legs were stone pillars

I had to move

Your chest was a mountain

I had to scale

Your mouth was sweet honey

I had to taste

You feeling me was

Pudding sliding down my throat

You grabbing me was

How a shark can only

Bite to feel

You kissing me was

How an orange is juiced

Me loving you shredded

Away my flesh

To the unknown person inside

That maybe you could love

How fire asks forgiveness

From the burned

Asleep

All the pictures I have

Of you are you sleeping

A different expression

In each one

What were you thinking?

Could you smell the rose

I put beside you

That you did not yet know

Was there?

Symposium

His weight shifted to the other hip

Next to the lectern

Ridges in his scrim blue jeans

Hypnotized me like waves of Melville

I was Ahab

His presentation on hagiography in the

Middle Anglo-Saxon period:

Boring as all fuck-fuckery

Could a PHD like him go for a jejune

Undergraduate ibis thing like me

Some caitiff some bacilli

Some feckless nair

Who doesn’t know his saxhorn

From his sackbut

Still, I could cover him in sacchrides and show him

Just how the matted ibex everyday

Climbs a mountain

I wish he’d put down that

Incunabula and show me the demiurge

In one thousand little deaths

Force me to type the transcript

Only to gag me with his idiolect

I would play him like an ocarina

My fingers modifying holes like a pro-bowler

Crawling on each other like continents

Destructive, palinspastic, and graphed

All of the ichors in me

Were convected heavy metals

There was a fabrisity

Even in my hands

And a sex devil saying

Only one sectile belt

Kept me away