How To Do Things With Men (#1)

How to do things with men: steal their documents, suppress their analysis, follow them around, follow them home

being taken home involves metal and steel and fluorescent light, how involved can you get

being taken alive

Later, tea with the emperor, countless visitations, haunted moors of men who stare back from behind car windows and you wonder what's there

A beautiful neck near a beautiful collar

not much face to go around

a picaresque

to see into the future / steal those documents / let men be in their natural habitat and watch them closely twitching in their sleep

or escaping from one thought to another, words

mean so much, just barely enough

a whole history of them in every man, each man walking the walk

later and excited and a little drunk

staying up to late to write a note about the noise in the garden—don't

stop to listen to analyze the radio going

I want to know what love is or You’re so fucking special

the part of the house where the nights are a little longer, a little darker, a little more meaningful in context

with damp hair covering everything I can’t conceive of even trying to go forth. This

is the closest you’ll ever get to following him home. It’s called dusk.

Sitting across from him in his kitchen

wincing or cricking your neck or jackknifing for men, making men a path down which you can lead them and then leave them there full of suppressed doubt, a switchback

in flattering sunlight

Take off their clothes and think only of the history of clothes, of bandages and modesty

and how it’s too hot

how you can’t wait

everyday a taller building to scale, another stranger to meet

Lead men home and sit them in the wicker chairs reserved for guests and give them tea and listen to them explain the relationship between sickness and politics

without thinking

and the curtains are nice, the way they let in just enough light to erase just enough detail


Listen to what men say when they talk about witnesses and silences and work

Listen to how men work, every sly grin as if opening an oil barrel from the inside

With men’s hands you can do whatever’s worthwhile in the time allotted

before the sun goes down on men, none left

to pick, pass by or pack away for later, another doorway to pass through, another risk to run

Give men names but don’t say them aloud / wait there forever trying to keep it to a dull roar, a social headache, the public reduced to a hot white point

when you’re here, dear

Do something instead of just smiling     (following his gaze around the room)

politely     in polite company     Keep pushing

until the flesh of what he says turns white













Nicholas Grider is an artist and writer who divides his time between Milwaukee and Los Angeles.






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