Syd Westley
Trance Notebook
after Wayne Koestenbaum
microplastic
malaise at target
looking for a new
pot
/
poetry about ideas
makes me feel
stupid ugly man
says
/
it took two years
to find a good dj
in st louis but i
finally did it
/
her name is
sydney and
she’s trans
coincidence?
/
jojo siwa
becoming
a huge cultural
signifier
unsure
what this means
for lesbians
/
students seem to be
curiously less nihilistic
than me
/
in pursuit of more
life or more death
d and i argue
about sadomasochism
/
how dark is ur
sex on a scale of 1-10
/
how much money
do u spend on
skincare per month
are you using retinol
/
it has to do with
longevity (roth ira)
/
predicting a big
oasis revival in next
three years
/
predicting the fall
of pitchfork
/
no ugly man
is immortal
/
goodbye!
/
think i’m taking
astrology too
seriously
/
stuck my head
in the washing
machine
/
o distortion
my heart
/
pleasure to burn
advertisement
by the cigarette
dispenser
/
pleasure to burn
my lungs
brian eno says
smoking is fabulous
/
the deniable
plausability
of union
/
st louis fashion
unabashedly
straight out of
2010’s
/
i would like
to be just a little
fabulous
/
turned on learning
about shakespeare’s
eunuchs at age sixteen
/
castration
still very
sexy
/
lecturer boldly
says do not listen
to your mind listen to
your body
/
she’s clearly never
been in my body
instrumental no. 2
for d.s.
i think i understand
maybe partly
why you died
there are holes
in the walls
of the room i built
people look in thru them
at me naked they can see
the clit at my center
sometimes i forget
about the holes
then someone
reaches in and touches
me
Syd Westley is a poet and artist living in Oakland, California. Holding an MFA in poetry from Washington University in St. Louis, their work has been supported and/or published by Lambda Literary, the Adroit Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, and others. They also write music reviews at https://sydboyxxxmusic.blogspot.com