Acceptance: Boyslut

VISIT BOYSLUT


Five of my poems up right now at Boyslut, a journal that dares to tightrope walk the thin sharp nexus between literature, erotica, rough trade and porn. In fact, one of the poems of mine they published is called “porn.” Is this is a good poem, is it literature? I would say absolutely yes, like most of the work at Boyslut.

There’s plenty of sexed up themeplay at this venue; but to me the most beguiling aspect is the chemistry between the two editors, which seems the tip of an odyssey a la Richard Gere and Julia Roberts.

I’ll get to that in a minute.

First of all, the face-to-face editor is Jeremy King, who is gracious, modest, jaded, and disarming in his astute ambivalence. He describes himself as “just another editor” who “complains about quitting on a daily basis.” He took all five of my poems, he said in an email, because he “couldn’t make up his mind on which one to post.” His almost dramatic ennui made me think that he wanted to tack, “if any” onto the end the sentence. I loved it. He has a ragdoll cat’s charm.

The intriguing and dramatic part is that he seems to be locked into a trying yet galvanic dialectic with the other editor, Devlin de la Chapa. He tells us to “buy Devlin’s book so she can stop bitching to him on how self-publishing really sucks.” We are told further, in the “About Editors” section, that Devlin is taking time off to work on her libido-brimming novel of teen angst and malfeasance. She is more an eminence grise than a practical ally in Jeremy’s toilsome grind--and it is quite a pace he keeps up, publishing a new poet every few days. This is wonderful for us readers, as we get new features constantly.

My favorite in the recent line up is Paul Tristam, who has great lines like these from “They Jail People Like Me”:

But we are REAL!

and that’s what matters

in this constant assembly-line

of cardboard cut-outs.

We are the Van Gogh splash of Yellow

across the Daily Factory Grey.

Anyway, this is a unique raw-hearted journal and I’ve over-emphasized the sex because it is also about many other major and ecstatic and/or brutal aspects of life, extolled in throat-humming voices of resonant zest.

I hoot this with ecstastic confidence: there is nothing wrong with becoming a boyslutter if it means reading and raving about Boyslut!

Check it out, and try to break Jeremy out of his processorial glaze.


Owl

PS:

My five poems, featured at the site for only a day or so are:

flower in diary
porn
standoff
ghost orgy
false apathy