Good afternoon everyone. My name is Souleyman, for those who don’t know, and today I’m reading my poem titled ‘Where Art My Lady’. Here it goes…

His nose is big. I wouldn’t describe it as grecian or artfully vast, as it takes up the expanse of his face in a more demanding way. One’s attention is inevitably drawn to it at first glance. It would be a hefty Mexican dollop of sour cream, not the kind on whatever scale is used to measure dainty European noses in all their beautiful propagandized perfection. Sincerely, his nose is quite a bit larger than that of the averagely large nose and to acknowledge it would do a great deal of justice to the portrait you are now constructing. His nose was big, as were all his features. His lips, equally sized in length and width were scarily plump, verging on what one may mistake for swollen. Protruding passed his broad nose (as, despite the sheer size, its broadness was met with a rather flat form), his lips parted naturally if he did not keep them pursed. I can see why the boy writes beautiful prose on the female form-- it was almost a shame to study him. 

His skin was of a mahogan hue, rich and complex and inviting in the light. Harsh and inauspicious in shadows, a dimly lit staircase, or the back of our lecture hall. One could conclude it was his stature, standing at a whopping 6 foot 5 inches, it may be the culprit for his intimidating aura. One could also deduce that it came from fear, as in he doesn’t look much like me and probably not you either, reader. His eyes, the deep-set tunnels that simultaneously bore into and drew a great distance from others. His eyelids are heavy with fat on an otherwise fine face, with one brow slightly lower than the other carrying scar tissue of an incident I was fascinated to know of. There is no dazzling variety of browns in his irises, just the color you mistake for black every time, but I find it to be reminiscent of deep, dark, moist earth. I see myself in them. But who’s got his tongue? Rimbaud? Rilkes? So long as it’s not Bukowski, he’s got my attention. 

Perhaps a grandiose delusion, but I believe I could be the pretty little lady to crack his core. For a man who meditates on a woman's beauty is always a producer of poetry born from physicality. Oh yes, in falsified adoration, I am reduced to little more than a lily whose petals make up my fleshy labias with vines running down my legs, wrapping around his ankles and dragging him towards my yoni, to which he is powerless. If I’m lucky, there is mention of my face, likely my childbearing hips and gratuitous thighs. I am a seductive theory, a sexy object. It is not a protest to write of his mediocrity-- if I am in such a lust driven world let me speak my truth in its entirety: poetic musings are only so nourishing. 

It was Joan Didion on self-respect that birthed the realization-- it is a cop out to live within literature. ‘Remain[ing] the secondary character in your own motion picture’ a song dear to me goes. Processing everything as a scene, formulating life into a manuscript is lazy work. The book will never get written. This boy, he can spend a great deal of time fixated on women, studying their mannerisms, bodies, the twitch of their buttocks while standing in line, but he will never know her. What he would ask of her is to ‘be normal’. To act according to his predestined script of what it would be like to know her. This normalcy cares not of her genuine wellbeing, but her wellbeing in relation to him. When she inevitably blooms exposing her tender stamen, the poetry will cease to flow and he will leave her. Wilted, at that. 

It is not a safe world for him and I cannot blame him for finding refuge in prose. But why bodies he’s never been in? Examining him now, I’m quite unsure of how I will proceed. His hands were grecian ironically, the likes of a God. His pen is a feeble toothpick and I only have an idea of the potential web of veins to explode when he applies pressure. I wished he would put it down and slam the podium in some passionate display of masculinity or aggression. I drifted, imagining my neck in place of the pen. I enjoy an expression of sexuality I fear he will only meditate on in his lifetime. Despite outward appearance, he was soft and delicate. I wanted to take advantage of it. I wanted to be his anti-muse.

To be deemed conservative and moral publicly, to then act like a feral rabbit behind closed doors is to be a hypocrite. I do not shy away from the label. He needs to know I am a cold-case with very little information to gather but on my good graces. To get off, and get off good, I need to demonstrate flagrant indifference to his existence. He is another classmate of whom I astutely give my undivided attention. Backwards, perhaps, but the real play is in the poker face. He’s looked up to address the room, twice, three times now finding my eyes. I have a tendency to glaze over in the presence of my peers so whether it was his first time seeing me in this lecture hall, I can't say, but it was undoubtedly his first time seeing me see him. Moments like this make a man nervous. Was this poem a declaration of hunting or merely baiting? I’ve never noticed him before and he doesn’t speak a language I find particularly endearing, but his piece reads as a call to action. Who is it you’re looking for, my love, and are you really ready to meet her? 
I already feel my bones snapping and shredding, preparing to be cast in a new mold, severing myself to slip perfectly into his syntax, “Romeo! Oh where art thou Romeo?”

I wanted to play and he was up to bat.