"You Are Jeff" by Richard Siken // z + male desire
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23 Let's say that God is the space between two men and the Devil is the space between two men. Here: I'll be all of them-Jeff and Jeff and Jeff and Jeff are standing on the shoulder of the highway, four motorbikes knocked over, two wrenches spinning in the ordinary air. Two of these Jeffs are windows, and two of these Jeffs are doors, and all of these Jeffs are trying to tell you something. Come closer. We'll whisper it in your ear. It's like seeing your face in a bowl of soup, cream of potato, and the eyes shining back like spoons. If we wanted to tell you everything, we would leave more footprints in the snow or kiss you harder. One thing. Come closer. Listen . . .
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TBH, this is an extremely complex, dense poem, one that queer critics could write a thesis about, and so I will not try !! I will try to tl;dr instead.
I chose this poem for Aaron rather than others from Crush though because I think it speaks to more than just gay desire-- a huge part of it is absolutely erotic and about love and sex, but there are also stanzas here about relationships with father figures or lack of father figures and also a relationship to God and masculinity in general that really feels like it encompasses Aaron's fraught childhood. His life was defined pretty early on by being a bastard son-- the wedge between his father and his father's wife, the intruder in the Zimas' lives, an imposter to the Zima name. Combine that with his intense bond with Robbie and his difficult relationship with his grandfather (a very traditional, masculine man who Z loved but was an alcoholic and who Z often did not feel understood by) and I feel like this poem best explores all these different facets of male relationships (to ME, that's what the poem is referencing with all the Jeffs.) It does so in a fragmented, brutal, violent, foreboding, yet often beautiful kind of way that also fits Aaron's themes, especially as his own shadow demon grows and his control slips. The poem is, after all, a tragedy-- and right now, Aaron's story is too.
