Jake

“Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“But artists aren’t the only marginalized folks controlling real estate. Think about the colonizing role that wealthy white gay men have played in communities of color; they’re often the first group to gentrify poor and working-class neighborhoods. Harlem is a good example. Gays have moved in and driven up rents, as have renegade young white students, who want to be cool and hip. This is colonization, post-colonial-style. After all, the people who are “sent back” to recover the territory are always those who don’t mind associating with the colored people! And it’s a double bind, because some of these people could be allies. Some gay white men are proactive about racism, even while being entrepreneurial. But in the end, they take spaces, redo them, sell them for a certain amount of money, while the people who have been there are displaced. And in some cases, the people of color who are there are perceived as enemies by white newcomers.”
― bell hooks, Homegrown: Engaged Cultural Criticism

“We still groped for each other on the backstairs or in parked cars
                                                                                                                                                      as the road around us
grew glossy with ice and our breath softened the view through the glass
                    already laced with frost,
but more frequently I was finding myself sleepless, and he was running out of
                                                                                                                                                                          lullabies.
But damn if there isn’t anything sexier
                                                            than a slender boy with a handgun,
                                                                                                                                  a fast car, a bottle of pills.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“Hello, darling. Sorry about that. Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud. Especially that, but I should have known. You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.”
― Richard Siken, Crush