Dean Kostos’s newest book, This is Not a Skyscraper, contains many gems. This reflection on a porn watcher’s sense of entitlement to the attention of a neighborhood porn star–“earned by years of yearning”–is one such standout.
—
No Elegies for Porn Stars
for Arpad Miklos (Peter Kozma), dead from suicide at age 45
I fell in love with you on page thirty-seven.
Shirtless, you slouched by a column,
thumbs inserted in pockets
like commas. My eye tapered
to your furred chest, to waist
& up again, meeting your goateed
grimace. As I turned the page, you shed
your jeans. A curve joined hip
to groin, seen in statues by Lysippus.
The parting photograph in the magazine
showed you reclining. Your face blurred
as if belonging to a separate reality.
Later, when your flesh pulsed
on a lit screen, the men
you devoured & who devoured you,
moved as if swimming in a desktop-
aquarium. Each contour of sinew, each swell
advanced the narrative—pleasure,
the protagonist. I stuffed my eyes
till climax, then clicked off
the website. Your flesh-&-blood self
lived on in my Chelsea neighborhood.
I spotted you dining by the window
of a restaurant & gawped
as if I owned you, having craved
devoutly. On Twenty-Third Street:
a summer midnight. You peeled back
humid shadows, held
another man. I pictured you kissing
me. The last time, I ogled
you on a cruise, my stare meeting
your glower. I thought, Arrogant,
full of himself. But it was I, full
of what I expected you
to be, what I thought you owed me,
earned by years of yearning.
***
Dean Kostos has published here before. Read “Ice Garden” and “The Antique Cast.”
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