EVERYDAY PORNOGRAPHY

JONATHAN MAY

You call the thing inside of you a monster
as you gyrate thigh-level with your open mouth.
The stranger spunks into your face.
You think of Spiderman and inside
you can’t help but feel like the villain.
You call the thing inside of you a monster
but you don’t even know what those look like
anymore, lost to childhood dark. Your face 
drenched in white crude, your eyes two mirrors 
showing nothing. Then he hitches up his pants 
and nods to leave. Then you’re alone again.
You do this to yourself to call something else
a monster. The monster is always the stranger.
The monster is always what you call the thing inside you.
Not you, but the thing inside you. See the difference?
You’re still afraid to find there’s nothing there.
Your face the painted shield, war-white, against
an inner darkness.
                                  My father calls it the God-shaped hole.
My friends who don’t believe call it nothing,
change the subject. It’s the same sometimes—
naming, not naming.
                                       Your face splits open,
like a cocoon, revealing an opening, a voice.
Its thereness speaks from the hole’s bottom, 
and for a long while, you’re afraid of the voice. 
Then you’re afraid of the silence.

"This piece came from a place in my life where I was constantly scrutinizing sexual behavior as a means to explore spirituality. I probably went through at least ten different titles over the years, but the numbness of the experience is what I wanted to stand out, so I went with 'Everyday Pornography' in the end."

Jonathan May grew up in Zimbabwe as the child of missionaries. He lives and teaches in Memphis, TN. His work has appeared in [PANK], Superstition Review, Plots With Guns, Shark Reef, and Rock & Sling. He’s recently finished translating the play "Dreams" by Günter Eich into English.

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