The next
guy
who
asks
for my
dick
pic
will get
this poem.
See
I grew
up in the ‘90s,
a decade
during which
the House
of Rep
resentatives im
peached the
pres of the US
[Bill Clinton
received
two charges:
perjury
& obstruct
tion of justice]
for, among
other things,
lying
abt “sexual
relations”
w Monica
Lewinsky.
He
was
eventually
acquitted
but
all my
yng mind
under
stood
at the
time
was:
blowjobs
will get
you
fired.
Ten yrs
later,
a guy
on
line
asked
me why
I would
n’t send
him
a dick
pic
&
I
want
ed to respond
BLACKMAIL
but instead
typed:
“for my
job”
(although: un
employed
at the time).
And it’s,
like, besides
politicians,
now
[in 2015]
tech
nology, all
the apps
have made
us
forget
our
man
ners.
The next guy who
asks for my dick pic
will get this poem:
you
could
tell
more
abt
how I’d
be in bed
from THIS
stanza
than a dis
embodied pen
is.
[Best
angle,
fresh
ly, trim
med, out
of the show
er, light
ing on
point.]
A poet
once
told me
my skin
ny poems
look
lonely
&
selfish.
But still
I try
to be
cool.
Did
you know
some
one on
Tumblr
created
a mosaic
of GOP Candidate
Donald
Trump’s
face
out
of
just
dick
pics?
Time
changes
things.
“Dick pics
are no
big
deal,”
[I bet
close to
85%
of gay
men
have one
on their
phones
right
now]
I said
to my
friend.
“In ten yrs
dick pics
will be
so
common,
they’ll
be on
top
of
resumes.”
My friend
looked
at me
are you
crazy
&
told me he
did
n’t get a
paleontology
job, last
yr
b/c
the employer
had found
naked
pictures
he took
in his
twenties.
“I just
always
want
ed to take
them,”
he said.
“It
gave me
a rush,
but now
I work
at a grocery
store
&
I’m not
a professor
b/c
of it.”
This poem:
is a dick
pic.
[Blackmail]
If my
employer—
I actually
now
have a
job—
reads this
poem
will I get
called
into HR?
Will I get fired?
Will I be escorted
out of the building?
I’m a fuck
ing poet.
I might
write
a lot
about sex,
but that does
n’t mean
I’m having
much
of it.
The next guy who asks for my dick pic will get this poem.
And I’ll
most
likely
be
left
looking
Tyler Gillespie’s writing and reporting have been featured in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, Salon, The Guardian, and on New Orleans Public Radio. His poems appear in The Los Angeles Review, PANK, Columbia Poetry Review, Juked, Hobart, and the Wisconsin Review. He’s probably the palest Floridian you’ll ever meet.