Daniel Casey: Simply Being
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Grey Ace Endures
What kind of man are you,
if you don’t want to fuck?
Say what you will about
proclivities, at least
they are desires. What sort
of person has no taste
for flesh? Certainly, no
kind of monster rather
some craven creature who
refuses succession
in anyone. As it is
unnatural, it is
holy, abstinence
an assertion made to
remain pristine perfect
until bruising. But you,
your choice, if that is what
we can call it, is just
inhuman.
I’d say it is
the same as what it
might mean when a man
says a man knows what
a man does to a
woman. You can’t
ever conceive of
how I live or love
or survive
simply being.
These poems originally appeared in our ebook The Queer Body.
Daniel Casey (@OnceMoreDaniel) has a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame. His poems and reviews have appeared in Jet Fuel Review, Rise Up Review, Tuck Magazine, Waxing & Waning, North of Oxford, Heavy Feather Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and JMWW Journal. For now, he lives Kentucky.
