Alexander Lazarus Wolff
The Hookup Hunt
It would happen like this: night would flood the streets, and I would get into my car, driving to the other side of the city where prostitutes were pent up in motel rooms and men were selling dime bags of crack. But I was after a different drug. I rolled up into the dirt driveway of Chase’s place and walked to his duplex. The place was a shabby grey, the eaves sagged, and moths stirred around a flickering porch light. The moon glazed the windows. Inside, roaches scuttle back into the corners. We pretend to be interested in each other, but we know we are both blow-up dolls made of meat. Always the world with its cardinal sins… We rushed toward his bedroom. I pushed him down onto his bed with its dirty sheets and pinned his arms above his head. Grinding into him—it was like pistons pumping in a machine. The world slipped from me and—for once—a current of pleasure flowed through my veins. By morning, it all dissolved in sunlight.
For My Mother, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further
“Not that it was beautiful, but that, in the end there was
a certain sense of order.” —Anne Sexton
What I weave into these sentences is not meant to unveil that which you don’t want others to see, to divulge a family secret or to snipe you for some forgotten failure. I merely hope to collect the fractured memories from the life I had before, smoothing and removing their grit, and polishing them so they shine as does the sea when the sun is setting. I recall, from when I was eight years old, the stained-glass windows of Blessed Sacrament Church. Bored by the priest’s monotonous incantations, I took interest in how those panes could catch the light of late morning and turn them into beams of sapphire, gold, and emerald, colors in stark contrast to the well-worn gray carpet and off-white walls. Like that stained glass, I want to filter the light of my past and make it effulgent, turning my prior pains into prismatic rays that could be of interest to someone and, perhaps, a source of solace for another. Isn’t that the purpose of art?
Alexander Lazarus Wolff is a student at the College of William & Mary. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry website, The Citron Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, Serotonin, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor for The Plentitudes.
You can find him and more of his work on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolffalex108/: on Instagram: @wolffalex108; and at www.alexanderlazaruswolff.com.
The Hookup Hunt
It would happen like this: night would flood the streets, and I would get into my car, driving to the other side of the city where prostitutes were pent up in motel rooms and men were selling dime bags of crack. But I was after a different drug. I rolled up into the dirt driveway of Chase’s place and walked to his duplex. The place was a shabby grey, the eaves sagged, and moths stirred around a flickering porch light. The moon glazed the windows. Inside, roaches scuttle back into the corners. We pretend to be interested in each other, but we know we are both blow-up dolls made of meat. Always the world with its cardinal sins… We rushed toward his bedroom. I pushed him down onto his bed with its dirty sheets and pinned his arms above his head. Grinding into him—it was like pistons pumping in a machine. The world slipped from me and—for once—a current of pleasure flowed through my veins. By morning, it all dissolved in sunlight.
For My Mother, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further
“Not that it was beautiful, but that, in the end there was
a certain sense of order.” —Anne Sexton
What I weave into these sentences is not meant to unveil that which you don’t want others to see, to divulge a family secret or to snipe you for some forgotten failure. I merely hope to collect the fractured memories from the life I had before, smoothing and removing their grit, and polishing them so they shine as does the sea when the sun is setting. I recall, from when I was eight years old, the stained-glass windows of Blessed Sacrament Church. Bored by the priest’s monotonous incantations, I took interest in how those panes could catch the light of late morning and turn them into beams of sapphire, gold, and emerald, colors in stark contrast to the well-worn gray carpet and off-white walls. Like that stained glass, I want to filter the light of my past and make it effulgent, turning my prior pains into prismatic rays that could be of interest to someone and, perhaps, a source of solace for another. Isn’t that the purpose of art?
Alexander Lazarus Wolff is a student at the College of William & Mary. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry website, The Citron Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Main Street Rag, Serotonin, and elsewhere. He is a poetry editor for The Plentitudes.
You can find him and more of his work on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolffalex108/: on Instagram: @wolffalex108; and at www.alexanderlazaruswolff.com.
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