Love Thirsts for More Love

KARAN

Dante, thank you for writing so honestly & shamelessly about the body — I’ve always admired that about your work. “Shortly after my girlfriend agrees to an open relationship” opens with crabs. Your girlfriend is seen “Tweezing my hole” saying “This is love.” I believe it. The poem ends with “Two lovers hunting / for life / we haven’t yet killed.” That ending is amazing & deliciously multiplicitous! Let’s go a bit unconventional with this interview — tell us about your philosophy of love & intimacy, if you feel okay sharing?

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DANTE

Straight culture so often mistranslates love into a tired game of possession, of “finding your person,” when really love is something far more wondrous and expansive. Silly, even. I have, like, 18 crushes right now, each crush a precious little love nugget I’m unwilling to surrender—much like my friendships, which I also count as romances, each lush with intimacy that transcends sex. These love affairs have not jeopardized intimacy with my longtime partner; if anything, they have enriched and deepened our commitment. That’s because, for me, love is wonderfully boundless and kaleidoscopic, unwieldy even—almost nauseatingly abundant and all-consuming. Love thirsts for more love. Perhaps that’s why monogamy has never worked for me, and never will. “Surround yourself with people whose eyes light up when they see you coming”—that’s what queer icon André De Shields advised in his Tony acceptance speech. He’s right. How beautiful it is, witnessing someone’s spirit brighten at the mere sight of you. And to be that person, heart aflutter, when your beloved arrives. I feel strongly that love demands presence—a symbiotic showing up authentically/welcoming generously. When I fell in love with a woman at 23, we defaulted immediately to monogamy, a choice that ended up hurting both of us; monogamy, ironically, made me less present with my “one person.” What I will forever appreciate about my ex is far more than her valiant attempts to nurture my queerness. It was also her sober acknowledgement that her well had run dry. When we broke up, we wept together. Leaving each other was a final act of love. 

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KARAN

“Sexy Can I” is hilarious and devastating. You’re obsessing over a baby tooth, over being discovered like Chloë Sevigny, over whether having a dozen dentists fawn over your mouth makes you a slut (LOL). The dentist suggests Botox for teeth grinding and you think, “Because someday, someday I’ll be beautiful.” Where did this essay-poem come from? How do you write about wanting to be beautiful without falling completely into either self-pity or self-hatred?

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DANTE

I wrote this quite a long time ago, in 2019. Pre-TwinkDeath. I was 29 but felt adolescent: I had just come out as queer, just moved to Brooklyn. Life felt thrilling and confusing, as it so often does when you’re a bit consumed with main character syndrome & also are genuinely on a journey & want to get laid & are getting laid but it’s not that great & want to fall in love & also are afraid of falling in love & realize, Oh, shit, I think I hate my dad!? I wrote this poem in an oversized sketchbook, on the hardwood floor of my inconceivably affordable & large Brooklyn apartment. It was one of those flow state moments where the first draft just poured out of me; what I wrote is more or less what you see here. Perhaps I didn’t get trapped in self-pity and self-hatred because the layers of longing I excacvated—to be wanted, to be seen, to be loved—directed me so thrillingly forward. Put less pretentiously: I had fun writing this poem. It’s always tasted good in mouth. And I think I had fun because I was being honest. I wager this was the first honest poem I ever wrote, where I wasn’t trying to be someone else. 

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KARAN

I’m curious about the form of “gym showers” — I really love how it moves across the page, creating a sort of visual tension. And you acknowledge that tension in the poem: “what we ride / is the tensile air / warped / by these cocks.” How does the visual arrangement change what the poem can say about cruising, about desire?

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DANTE

Cruising is an act of seeing, out of sight. I’m interested in this tension. I’m also interested in risk as an aphrodisiac: how the fear of getting caught is outpaced by the related thrill of getting away with it. I wanted the poem to reflect the possibility of pleasure within the confines of a historically homophobic (yet still very gay!) place, the gym. A prose poem didn’t seem right—too expansive. Nor did a “traditional” lineated poem—too neat. So I wound up with this, a poem both narrow and long, not unlike that “sliver of seeing” between shower curtain and wall. This poem, like cruising: both constrained and chaotic. When I wrote the piece, I created white space and line breaks intuitively. This, too, felt like an ode to public sex, to the presence and risk it encourages. 

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KARAN

“Dear Fuqboi” is formatted as a cover letter applying for the role of “FuqboiBoyToy.” You catalog your qualifications: daddy issues, repressed gay desires, willingness to wait in gas stations while “wildfires rage, Israel bombs, floods flood.” That juxtaposition is brilliant. How do you hold personal romantic catastrophes alongside larger political catastrophes? 

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DANTE

Oh, Karan—if only I knew! I suppose honesty is one way through. To be honest with what’s going on, both personally and globally. Like, “Welp, I’m about to fuck this not very nice but very hot DL man in his office, and also I’m playing NPR and the world is on fire—and, oh, my, why the hell am I doing this? Is life worth living?” It can all get very depressing, this holding of catastrophe. And still it feels woefully inadequate: merely holding, simply cataloging. Lately, feeling hopeless and powerless, I’ve considered what I can control. And I’m fortunate to have quite a say on who is in my life (and in my bed). adrienne maree brown sources hope from fractals, the never-ending patterns that are replicated in small and large scales across nature. Transforming who we are at a small scale can transform who we are at a large scale. I find hope in this concept.  

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KARAN

Shame moves through these poems in complicated ways. You write about your “20+ years ‘as’ a straight man” giving you “the shame needed to succeed in this role.” But the poems themselves feel shameless — graphic, unapologetic, joyful even! What’s your relationship to shame? Does writing transform it, or does it just document it?

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DANTE

Being queer in a culture that hates queer people is, of course, a great breeding ground for shame. And shame famously thrives in the dark, mucky cave known as silence. For a time, documenting my shame was enough. I needed to archive the immense shame I had kept quiet for so long. But lately, with age, I feel more called to take this further: why merely document shame when I compost it into something useful, not just for me but hopefully for fellow queers? My favorite writers make me excited to be alive. Their work  reinvigorates my commitment to living, to bearing the pain while still remaining tender. I hope my poems are more than just archives of shame. I want them to amplify joy, sex, faggotry, love. 

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KARAN

Want to come back to form for a bit. You work in so many forms: lineated lyrics, prose poems, epistolary pieces, typographically experimental work. How do you decide which form a poem needs? What drew you to the cover letter format for “Dear Fuqboi”?

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DANTE

I try to follow my gut—what feels right. My academic training troubles me sometimes, because I can be drawn to an idea around form. Like—Oh, let me take an old copy of Good Housekeeping and construct an erasure poem about butt sex as a psychoanalytic inquiry into patriarchy and domesticity! Like, huh? Maybe that’s formally inventive, but it’s a brain exercise—an idea, not an impulse. The gut has its own brain, one our society foolishly denigrates as “primitive.” I’m grateful that theater training—acting, comedy, clown, dance—instilled in me the peril of ideas and the power of impulses: whereas our attempts to manufacture profundity usually produces the opposite, listening to our gut can be profound because it’s so honest. Animal. The cover letter format for “Dear Fuqboi” was an impulse I had, maybe/probably when I was stoned. It made me laugh: the cloying desperation of a cover letter not so unlike the depravity of chasing a fuckboi. As if a job, or a man, would heal me! The piece is not without its dark moments; the playful form helped me venture into that terrain.  

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KARAN

“Love letter” is addressed to Flora, who’s heartbroken. You write, “what I’m really saying is: I’m lost, too.” Then you correct yourself: “Your hurt hearts” becomes “How the hurt is a thing, the heart is a verb.” That slip from noun to verb in this particular context is refreshing. What does it mean for the heart to verb? 

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DANTE

The heart is always hearting, isn’t it? What a magnificent tangle of blood, muscle, tissue, and electricity! It quite literally keeps us going. Feels almost odd to render it a noun.  In this poem, making “hurt” the noun felt poignant: a hurt that hearts is a wound that can keep us going, if we let it. After all, heartbreak is an injury that begs for our attention. To tend tenderly to ourselves—is that not love? I have always admired Flora’s ability to treat sorrow as a lifeforce. Neither she nor I want to romanticize heartbreak. But we can’t neglect it, either. She has been a great teacher in that respect. 

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KARAN

Dante, you’re an educator, restorative justice facilitator, performer, and many other things. How do other practices shape/inform your poetry? 

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DANTE

Some writers dream of a life where they only write. Not me! That would feel lonely and odd. A betrayal to what my heart wants, which is many things. If I were only a poet, my poetry would suffer; after all, my work hinges on connection. I quite like people. One of my favorite things in the world is going to a bar or a club by myself, and just meeting strangers. Lately I’ve been teaching swim lessons to adults, many of whom are terrified of the water. Most of my students are strangers, yet we end up doing this incredibly intimate dance with our bodies in water, an element we need to survive—are literally born from! But also an element that can kill us. It’s really special, helping people find safety and joy in the water. So-called “survival jobs” notoriously drain people. I’m lucky: what I do “for work” isn’t always easy, but, more often than not, it energizes me. Listening anchors my education/facilitation work; this listening of course goes far beyond literal “hearing.” Maybe sensing is a better word. I can’t guide a student if I’m not listening, not sensing. I’d wager the same goes for poets. I can’t write good poems if I’m not present with the world and those in my life. 

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KARAN

I’m sure you’ve thought about this before, Dante, as we’ve borrowed the framework for this question from Sophia, our High Priestess. You know a poet’s work tends toward one of four major axes—poetry of the body, poetry of the mind, poetry of the heart, or poetry of the soul. Where would you place your work, if at all?

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DANTE

Body and heart. For me, that fusion is a way into the soul. I must admit: lately I resist—even resent!—poetry of the mind. Perhaps this antipathy is because my closeted life was such a brain exercise. I had to vacate my soul, my heart, my body to survive. I still need my brain to survive, but not as much. Don’t give me esoteric language; give me erotic language! Poetry that literally moves me. Makes me cry, makes me laugh, turns me on. 

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KARAN

What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever received? Alternatively: what would you tell other queer poets about writing desire, about writing the body without apology?

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DANTE

Ada Limón has talked about the value of taking breaks, sometimes for months at a time. She just trusts the writing will come. When I read this, a bell went off. I felt understood. This wasn’t even advice. It was more a blessing, one that undid the far-more-vetted advice: Write everyday. This has never worked for me. There are days I write for many, many hours, almost all day, often when a deadline approaches—most especially for theater, which has the best deadline of all: opening night. We all know writing is hard, but writing can be immensely fun and pleasurable. Even, dare I say, easy? Easeful? Not always, but it can be. Writing about the body really ought to be writing for the body, an incredible organism that needs to be nourished. To write about the body one first must nourish it. 

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KARAN

Would you offer our readers a poetry prompt—something simple, strange, or rigorous—to help them begin a new poem?

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DANTE

Rip up ten scraps of paper. On each scrap, list a delicious delight in your life. (Delicious needn’t be taste—imagine all the senses.) Put these scraps in a bowl. Pick a scrap. Now write a poem about that delicious delight for 5 minutes, non-stop. No backspace, no edit, no pausing. This is an exercise in being wild, imperfect—letting language live liquidly. You start with the delicious delight but you can let yourself go anywhere. 

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KARAN

Please recommend a piece of art (a film, a song, a performance, anything other than a poem) that’s sustained you lately or that you wish everyone could experience.

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DANTE

My Joy is Heavy, a musical/play by The Bengsons. It’s no longer running anymore in New York, but the eponymous song is online. I cried buckets and buckets and buckets at the show, flanked by my boyfriend and his parents. What a relief! A joy! To cry like that in a beautiful theater with people I love. Both times I’ve seen their work I can’t help but ugly-cry. That ugly-cry is, of course, beautiful because it points to a longing I, and so many of us, bury: to lead over lives with open hearts. Writing this feels banal, but the Bengsons make it meaningful. Irresistible. They help us excavate that longing and celebrate its mess.  

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KARAN

And finally, Dante, since we believe in studying masters’ masters, who are the poets or artists who’ve most shaped your sense of what’s possible in language? Who taught you that poems could be this funny and this raw at once?

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DANTE

Oh, so many people. What if I forget someone!!? I am now the flummoxed actress, Academy Award in hand, overwhelmed by the duty of gratitude. Welp, the 45 second timer has started, so here’s a non-exhaustive list….. My favorite poets include Tommy Pico, Rachel Camacho, Eileen Myles, CA Conrad, Ry Cook, Joshua Garcia, Chen Chen, jason b. crawford, Sam Hershel Wein, Diane Seuss, Claudia Rankine, Erika Meitner, Donika Kelly, Jennifer Franklin, Don Mee Choi. I’m lucky to count some of these poets as my friends. Mentors Khadijah Queen and Sophia Terazawa of course changed my life. The Faggots & Their Friends Between the Revolutions is a seminal/semen(l) book for me and so many queerdos. I’m a huge fan of Mariame Kaba, Shira Hassan, adrienne maree brown, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and other transformative justice scholars/practitioners. Playwrights/theater-makers include Lisa Kron, Jeanine Tesori, Lisa Fagan & Lena Engelstein, Jesús I Valles, Brandon Jacob Jenkins, Paula Vogel, Anne Bogart, Evan Spigelman, Sarah Ruhl. My beautiful boyfriend, Mark Blane, is an incredibly gifted filmmaker and actor. I would be remiss if I didn’t name Clara Wiest, Riot Mueller, and Amberine Huda, beloveds who treat language like a playground. 

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