original kink

In original kink, Jubi Arriola-Headley explores kink as mythscape of promised pleasure, lush and lustral, kink as Godzilla’s desire for softness and the speaker gone “starburst,” kink as “the sun-soaked / surface of impossible kick” and “something loose enough / to dance in.” At once soliloquy, praise song, and injunction, original kink divines the brutal offices and beauteous comforts of syntax, street corners, and superheroes as sites for Black and queer (un)becomings. Accompanied by Eve, Isaac Newton, and a cotillion of daddies, Arriola-Headley writes into pleasure’s beyond, questioning “What it must be / to presume life / to presume tomorrow.” These poems “glutton at spring’s source, / ever lovedrunk on / the insistent gush of you,” and create a dazzling, multiple “We.” These poems enjoin the reader—and themselves—to “Be better / than bitter. Be roiling in joy. Be.”