#didnt feel the need to rb the transjon post again but i appreciated their addition ab this 👍

[degenderates]

it truly is so strange that richard siken's work in tumblr/queer circles is known for this sort of pure yet devoted gay love when the devotion is actually obsessive and the purity is nonexistent. i half wonder if half the people who claimed to be fans of his poetry have not actually read crush or war of the foxes, just seen the bits about being in a car with a beautiful boy, and wearing the boy's jacket, or the inability to touch the stars. but have you actually read "you are jeff?" did you read all twenty four verses and the part about confusing the intimacy of a father, an uncle, a lover? did you read the part about a fraternal brawl on the side of the highway, the refusal to watch it from the inside of a car, the comparison of love to cancer? or did you take the entirety of crush to be a story about not being able to tell someone you love them? because yes, that's important, but the violence of the entire poetry collection has somehow been lost to the internet. crush's cover is a man wiping blood from his lips. the collection is about grief, love, obsession, violence, youth, self-destructiveness, mental health. it's not just "gay yearning" and god if that implication hasn't messed up so many people's goddamn perception.