The Poetry Project

No one's a hero in Outer Space

Phoebe Kaufman

I wanted the type of sex

That could roll off the tongue.

One of ease, one not necessarily legible,

But intuitive, one that tastes good.

Largely, one beyond an initiatory

Understanding of time. One which

Could move fluidly, could echo the form

Of its own making. A wet type of sex, sure, but

Wet as in a demarcation of linearity,

A fluidity concave over its own innards,

An unspinning of guts which mark blood

As a more concrete elongation than

Any type of clock. Sliding. Please

Understand: A sex which strays languid, which

Itself could disorient based on a confluence

Of liquid desire. What happens

In a black hole? The only thing we know for sure

Is that it’s shape — torus-like and

Folded in on itself — bellies inward

To the extent that time becomes foggy. Time

Becomes convoluted in it, occurring external

To extant knowledge of linearity, forward motion, etc...

Space-time so slippery, the image of

Going towards it like Claire Denis

Imagines. Claustrophobic in a brutalist

Kind of box, where sex is only allowed

Two ways: the first, external to the self.

Semen extracted in sleep and planted

Into a non-consenting womb. The

Second: masturbation in order to secrete enough liquid

To power the ship’s vegetable garden. Self-

Sufficiency, sex as continuation, as pleasure

Disparate from itself, but always moving

Towards something, towards a socially-driven need

For linearity. A linearity created by train travel,

Another way to move through space. In November

Of 1883, Congress agreed to standardize time

Enabling train companies

And the men who ran them

To increase their wealth, exponentially. In this way,

Being On It — riding time, so to speak —

Became legally aligned with manufacture

And the constant circulation of goods. Time

Is money, they agreed, so to make more of it,

To increase their money flow, time itself

Became the constant, no longer

Understood in relation to the sun.

No wonder Denis films all scenes on Earth

Inside or on top of a moving train.

A perpendicular opposition to the space mission,

One which modulates and floats

Towards a black hole, a type of time

Disconnected, it’s own regurgitation.

Juliette Binoche wraps herself

Around a red leather sex machine,

Groaning wildly, stretching

Herself on it. Towards internal combustion

Intertwines her hands with rope

& Makes herself sweat. Masturbation

As fertilization, expulsion of liquids

Which drip so sweetly. If trains

Standardize time, perhaps Outer Space

Distorts it. Sex in a box inching towards a black hole

Stretching from Earth towards a more jagged

More fuzzy rendering

Of what time could be. Blurred desire enacted

In the solitude of her sex

Mimicking mine as I watch her

The apartness which slides wetly.

Her overwhelming, witch-like pleasure

It’s hazy background & her closed

Eyes insist on a forgetfulness of the

Room she’s in, of the amount of time

It takes to make herself cum.

Time stops & I fall asleep.

All I’m doing is trying to move

Towards a disorientation dissected

From straight lines, one not too

Specific, but disjointed, one which

Finds its pleasure by working

Against it.

Work from My Smutty Valentine: Queer Kinships and the Poetics of Smut with Anchoress Syndicate

Elsewhere