Aaron Smith
In "Make Him Think You Could Pull a Gun," Aaron Smith writes: Watch his mouth dissolve, / watch it betray him. Show him a knife... And right there, My Friends, is where you start to understand that perhaps this poem isn't speaking entirely in metaphor, which is one of the thrills in reading Mr. Smith, of which there are many. "You’ve seen the movies, / and every scene is your scene: / the psycho singing love songs to the man he loves..." And this is, in fact, a love song, make no mistake. And what poet here hasn't sung such a love song? The bluntness of affect, the obsessive I-will-have-you-ness of the implied demand, the incantatory aspect of such explicitly imperative advice and the commanding presence it takes in the poem. And don't get me started on the internal rhyme (N.B.: Love it).
But the best move this poem makes is that it's been written to the wanter, not the wanted. A lesser poet might have written it the other way. Not Aaron Smith.
Thanks, Aaron.
***
Make Him Think You Could Pull a Gun
Make him think you’re crazy, make him think
you could pull a gun. He’ll remember you
this way. Men respond to grand gestures,
men respond, in their deepest parts, to fear.
Tell him you’ve met before, you’re sure of it,
you never forget a face
twisted in pleasure, panic. Watch his mouth dissolve,
watch it betray him. Show him a knife
slicing a body (more surprise than pain), the mirrored
blade, the skin. He’ll pretend he’s comfortable,
that you really don’t scare him. But it’s all anxious
lie. You’ve seen the movies,
and every scene is your scene:
the psycho singing love songs to the man he loves,
blood, a perfect sunset, on the dead mother’s cheek—
you can taste that light. Tell him nobody belongs to him
more than you. Let him think he has some
room. Let him think he can choose.
***
About the Poet:
Aaron Smith is the author of Blue on Blue Ground, winner of the 2004 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize. He's a 2007 Fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
On the identity of The Nepotist:
Are you Anderson Cooper? (Hey, I can dream, can't I?) Or maybe you're Chloe Sevigny. I briefly tapped your shoulder at a Rufus Wainwright concert at Carnegie Hall and asked if you were in the drink line.
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