I could pretend I’m speaking to everyone-assume a middle distance and transcend myself-but I’m talking to you and you know it. Here I am in a rabbit run, here I am in a valley of pine, waiting for you to find me. The “I” actually encounters the “you” in “The Long and Short Of It,” after a few paragraphs explain what “you” are doing, seeing, feeling: The characters, vague silhouettes of gay men drawn to danger and desire, exist against a backdrop of worldly violence, designated by their actions and their fears. Or, when they do, the “I” seems to be a distant observer, almost a commentator. It is interesting to note that many of these poems do not have a speaker in the traditional sense. You want it all narrowed down to one fleshy man in the bath.

They want you to love the whole damn world but you won’t,

We are not dirty, he keeps saying, We are not dirty… Other times, the word “we” feels profoundly small not constricted, but deliberately limited to hold exactly two people, as in “Driving, Not Washing.” The same use of “you” appears again as well: It is a moment of pause, a way of stepping back from the poem’s immediate reality to ask a larger question about the usefulness of religion and the evasion of responsibility which may come as a result. Ridiculous idols so we can pray to what's behind them,īut what happens after we get up the ladder?ĭo we simply stare at what's horrible and forgive it? In “Snow and Dirty Rain,” the pronoun “we” seems to refer to all of humanity: But these examples are nowhere close to a comprehensive look at Siken’s adept plays with language and selfhood throughout his work.

In both works, “you” are marked only by action and reaction. You take her out into the rain and you fall in love with her This same use of the word “you” appears in the poem “Boot Theory.” You have been watched from a distance for some time now and now you are being watched from even farther away. Directly addressing and outlining the actions of a nebulous “you,” cultivating an atmosphere of disconcerting surveillance, and using non sequiturs like “anyway” to drive the poem’s plot are a few of the Sikenisms present in the opening: The first two lines of this piece briefly yet effectively exemplify Siken’s quintessential craft technique and style. “The Long and Short Of It” is a prose poem published in the Editor’s Pages of Issue 2.1 of Spork, the literary magazine of Spork Press which Siken cofounded in 2001.

Richard siken