WWPH WRITES ISSUE 63
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WWPH Writes 63… seeks love this holiday season with two heartfelt works… Misfortune of the Perpetually Single Gay Male Romantic by Piérre Ramon Thomas and ...nothing like the sun by Jamie Kern.
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WWPH WRITES POETRY
Piérre Ramon Thomas, a Washington, D.C.-metropolitan native, holds a Bachelor of Arts in English with a minor in Journalism. He was a Spring 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Fellow. Thomas’ published works can be seen in BlueInk (2021 and 2022), Magnificat (2022), and The Nomadic Poet: A Collection of Poetry & Prose. He’s currently working on a memoir of his life. For samples of his writings, visit www.pierreramonthomas.com.
Misfortune of the Perpetually Single Gay Male Romantic
Instead of an epochal love,
Years, decades loving on a man,
Having a man love on me,
Our shared history engraved in vibrant
pictorials on the Walls of Time,
What I have is a series of brief encounters:
Episodes where I risked death just for
emphemeral moment
Of what-feels-like-love.
Please don’t ask me to count them,
And please don’t ask me their names—
I don’t deserve that level of embarrassment
and shame.
Instead of being barefoot and . . . naked
Wearing nothing but a “Kiss the Chef”
apron in some man’s kitchen,
Letting him taste the black-speckled vanilla
custard
I’m whipping up for our crème brûlées,
I am reconsidering redownloading the
hookup apps:
You know which ones!
Even though I’ve sworn them off—
For what? This must be the twentieth
time—
To be reminded of a man’s touch,
What it feels like for someone to look at me
with carnivorous desire.
Being a romantic, an amorist, a devotee of
love
And being a perpetually single gay man
Is one of the most torturous circumstances
The universe could ever design and assign
some poor soul to.
Better if I were a hedonist:
The supply of undevoted, wanton pleasure
among gay men
Is never lacking, and never will.
©Piérre Ramon Thomas 2023
WWPH WRITES PROSE
Jamie Kern is an amateur writer in Virginia, one of the original members of the DC Writers’ Salon, and a science nerd. He aims to imbue his poetry and prose with notes of science, and his science with ripples of emotion.
…nothing like the sun
I do not want your sparks, Juliette. Do not strike your flint against me. That early shimmer, those ephemeral flashes harboring both hope and destruction. Your sparks – recklessly alive, propelled in all directions by too much quick friction. They fall upon the earth; they smolder and fade. They catch in our hair, in our clothes, in our eyes. They burn. They blind. That flame too hot, too soon, too short-lived. When just one of those embers strays too far into our scattered kindling, it ignites. Uncontrolled, your wildfire does not cease ‘til it has razed all our lands. ‘Til we are once again left dark and cold. No, my dear, this brief five-act play bodes poorly for us both. This type of “star-crossed” romance does not end well. Your sparks are nothing like the stars.
And I want the stars.
The stars begin with your very elements, the remnants of your scattered past. Slowly, methodically, intermingle them with my own. Let us, molecule by molecule, layer our former worlds upon one another. Let the gravity that this ever-denser cloud creates build as we become closer. Until, with this ample time and fuel we have provided, we begin to fuse. And as all our twos coalesce into one – as we cross into a star – this transformation releases its energy, penetrating the darkness.
No, Juliette, this is no five-act play; this is a saga. And it does not begin with your sparks, it begins with our dust. But it ends radiantly ever after.
©Jamie Kern 2023
WWPH Community NewS
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