A Primer for the Small Weird Loves

Richard Siken’s poem “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves” was published in his first poetry collection, Crush (2005). It is a prose poem, consisting of seven numbered segments (one can call them stanzas, even though they lack formal metrical structure) that are loosely connected by thematic repetition and reiterated images, phrases, and emotions. Like the whole collection, the poem is about gay male desire, hope, and heartbreak. More specifically, “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves” explores the consequences of internalized anti-gay bias on the romantic and sexual experiences of a gay man who is attracted to aggressive men and struggles with an ongoing ambivalence about his ability to love and be loved.

Be advised that the poem depicts sexual violence.

Poet Biography

Richard Siken was born in New York City in 1967 and lives in Tucson, Arizona. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the University of Arizona. In addition to being an accomplished poet, Siken is a painter, filmmaker, and a co-founding editor at Spork Press. He has also worked as a social worker.

Crush, Siken’s first book of poetry, won the 2004 Yale Series of Younger Poets prize and was published by Yale University Press in 2005. It also won the Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Siken’s work has been published in several journals and anthologies, and he is a recipient of a Pushcart Prize and grants from Arizona Commission on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. While Crush offers a highly emotional exploration of various facets of gay male desire and queer life, Siken’s second collection, War of the Foxes (2015), is a more cerebral investigation of artistic creation and representation, largely inspired by paintings.

Siken explains in multiple interviews that he was surprised by many readers’ visceral reaction to Crush and their desire to know more about the autobiographical details that inspired his poems. However, he opposes reducing poetry to the author’s biography, and his second collection deliberately disinvites such readings. In March 2019, Siken experienced a stroke, followed by slow recovery, but he began publishing poems online once again in 2020.

Poem Text

Siken, Richard. “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves.” 2005. LiveJournal.

Summary

Across seven stanzas, the speaker describes his gay romantic and sexual experiences, ranging from a middle-school crush to casual encounters marked by aggressive sexual acts, to more ambiguous reflections on failures of connection and communication between himself and his lovers. While the speaker consistently narrates in the second person—referring to the singular “you” as the subject of these stories—the “you” is, tacitly, the speaker himself.

In the first stanza, the speaker is in the eighth grade. Another boy holds the speaker’s head underwater because the speaker “wanted to touch [the boy’s] hands and lips” (Line 5). It seems to the speaker that this is a murder attempt—and not only does he feel he deserves this, but he believes death is inevitable for gay boys like himself and that “it doesn’t matter anymore” (Line 13).

The second stanza relays the aftermath of a dalliance with another man. The speaker asks “for the cab fare home” (Line 23), realizing his lover’s indifference.

The apathy of the last encounter turns into aggression with the third stanza, as the speaker engages in rough sexual play with a man who sees him “as a piece of real estate” (Line 27) or “just another fallow field” (Line 28). The speaker references several forms of sexualized violence in this exchange.

During another rough sexual encounter in the fourth stanza, the speaker is accustomed to such treatment; he describes himself as “the now familiar whipping boy” (Line 41). His lover repeatedly strikes him, though the speaker believes sexual desire is what drives the violence. He confesses he wanted to see himself “as someone who did these kinds of things” (Line 47).

The fifth stanza presents the first scene in which the speaker is not engaged with an object of romantic or sexual desire. At the supermarket. he observes a young man who “recoils as if hit, / repeatedly, by a lot of men, as if he has a history of it” (Lines 51-52), but the speaker turns away, reflecting that it’s “not [his] problem” (Line 53) and that “things happen every minute / that have nothing to do with us” (Lines 61-62).

The speaker opens the sixth stanza by alluding to a morbid sexual kink: “So you say you want a deathbed scene, […] and you want it dirty” (Lines 63-65). Though the speaker may want this deathbed scene, he also admits (or perhaps accuses himself) that “no one can ever figure out what you want, / and you won’t tell them” (Lines 66-67). Additionally, though he realizes someone does love him, that someone is not who he expected—nor does the speaker believe they could love him in a way he “would enjoy” (Line 71).

The seventh and final stanza describes an encounter that is ambiguous but appears to be sexual assault, with the speaker as the aggressor. At an unspecified location—presumably the speaker’s apartment after a party of some kind—“[t]he stranger says there are no more couches and he will have to / sleep in your bed” (Lines 76-77). The speaker knows he will force himself on the stranger if they share a bed, and—because the stranger “doesn’t listen” (Line 79) to the speaker’s warning—this is exactly what happens. The speaker pins down the stranger, who is “frozen” (Line 85) and unresponsive. The speaker won’t stop kissing him. The stranger stays frozen. The speaker knows that “he’ll never / forgive you” (Lines 85-86) but also hopes that “maybe now he’ll leave you alone” (Line 86).