America’s Most Wanted: An interview with Dennis Cooper

“I’ve long realized that a general puritanism in the US and a fear of difficult subject matter and a deep disrespect for the minds and ideas and emotions of teenagers and so on were going to be a problem my work would always face. It interests me to try to sneak through and around that prejudice.”

Dogs

Tonight I leave New York forever. I’m on Christopher street, the half litre of vodka decanted into my old jogging bottle and the plan is this – History day – I am history – I will stand beneath the triumphal Arch on which Duchamp in 1913 declared the Free Republic of Greenwich Village. I’ll have a double in the bar on 11th where Dylan Thomas had his last. Another double in Café Wa on McDougal where Hendrix played and Ginsberg ranted. Then walk reverently past the Stonewall memorial to 6th and Bleeker where the Weather Underground blew themselves to bits. Up to the 23rd and the Chelsea Hotel and Warhol and the Velvet Underground and Leonard Cohen’s love song for Janis Joplin and have another double.

In situ

My music begins with me alone in my bedroom. It’s a square room in a high-ceilinged Victorian house. I work on a computer at a pine desk, programming and arranging until my fingers freeze (there’s no heating). When I’m not at the desk I lie on the floor, or I perch in an old cradle full of stuffed animals. I’ve spent a long time trying to find a way to neatly compact all the books and records I keep for inspiration and, occasionally, distraction. I’ve had to make peace with the fact that I will never attain perfect alphabetical order.

Ravenswood

Such things should be done at night. Let morning come creeping like a grey ghost over the hills. It will not find him – pale, sleepless, unsatisfied. He will have done what was needful. In the moat the willow leaves are floating; they form no set design, but slowly arrange and disarrange themselves into different patterns as the wind ruffles the sluggish water. One might read the future in these patterns, or the past. Little golden fingers glide over black satin in loving caress. The dead leaves are lying in heaps whither the wind has blown them upon the tombs of the house of Ravenswood.

A Poem for Tony

he stood there brushing
his teeth
as she sat on the
shitter
unable to do anything
due to
the
constipation that befalls
all
junkies.

No Relation

While I watch Luke stare into the parking lot through my bedroom blinds, he tells me he’s convinced Ted will track his ass down. Must be good to know some man wants you bad enough, you feel the thirst thirty miles north. Thank the good and wonderful Jesus I’m so fucking plain. Every weekend at the bar, I watch myself in the wide, dark glass spread behind the liquor bottles. I’m too eager, always searching. My eyes latch onto any asshole headed my way.

Scars and Salvation: One

Note: “Scars and Salvation” is a four-part work which will encompass the summer editions of Dark Matter. We’ll be uncorking a new section each month for the next four months.

I’m lost in the glow of dying fireflies. My face sticks to cold stone and I’m wearing a suit the color of a summer funeral. Drool sneaks out of my mouth, slithers down my chin and drips onto the concrete floor. Hands seem like miles away, my fingers struggling to toss the soft confines of another hospital breeze. Three men in white rush to me in slow motion, their mouths open but absent of sound and words.

Hydrogen Jukebox: This is a Low

Ashy Pet. An Irish phrase originally applied to anyone who back in the peasant days hogged the fireside, refusing to brave the omnipresent rain outside to undertake the necessary spud-hunting, wake-attending, poitin-brewing or whatever it was they did in those days. Gradually, the saying became applied to a particular type of child, the type who didn’t go out with the other children on healthy outdoor pursuits like climbing trees, setting things on fire and tormenting the neighbourhood mentalist, the sort who instead stayed indoors, developed an unhealthy pallor and hung around with their mothers instead of having friends. Being a weakling child of sickly constitution and cowardly disposition, I was one such creature.

[Untitled]

he was drinking vodka
straight
no chaser

out of his favorite star wars glass
old school style

empire strikes back
from burger king

back when luke skywalker
meant something to him

back when things
were simpler
easier