Victim Weight
—
Patrick Holian
derelict scion of titillation, reapers wept,
the best of us gay for the barbell. fully scathed, ate the television whole.
the bulk of existence hinged on descent,
men clutched their pearls and one another in the shadows and gossiped
in frightened tones of victim weight,
proper deformities, emergence of indelicate striations. a furry, fit moss grew
on my teeth as a young grimace. gagging,
gagged, literally, caressed by filthy pump and lat spreading beneath diabolical
half-natty lighting, lilac and black rush
of blood. I played gangrene in that one movie. from a fertile sky, an augur
descended, pressed my temples between
its powerful, chalk-covered hands, mouthed the words, lock out. you may be
entitled to compensation, I interviewed
desolation with the rot of youth on my side, we introduced ourselves to or as
a sparkling, delectable humiliation, I keep losing
track, me, one big, endless stretchmark, mobius strip. summering in dank,
dim weightrooms across the land teeming
with the acrid scent of sweat, the smell of ammonia, the smell of rusting iron.
the fools whiled away their lives dipping their hands
in cool, slow-moving rivers, carrying their elder, ailing dogs in their arms like infants,
eating elote at the sea wall at sunset,
butter and Valentina dripping down their chins. measured eccentrics and measured
absence, agents of necessity and masculinity,
the creature dragged bronzed lace across my decollete, told me wicked, conniving,
stabilizing lies, ate away at my neck, I tore
my withered, former carcasses from within and loaded them onto the leg press
and hack squat, delicate and crude and grimacing,
I dropped acid for a few months and deadlifted until I bled from my eye sockets
and transcended, our bodies disagreed with the lives we led, but by then, it was too late.
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Patrick Holian (he/him/his) is a Mexican American writer from San Francisco, California. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Barrelhouse, Bennington Review, The Acentos Review, Yalobusha Review, and elsewhere. He was a 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s fiction finalist, a finalist for Michigan Quarterly Review’s 2021 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, and he received a 2025 Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.
the best of us gay for the barbell. fully scathed, ate the television whole.
the bulk of existence hinged on descent,
men clutched their pearls and one another in the shadows and gossiped
in frightened tones of victim weight,
proper deformities, emergence of indelicate striations. a furry, fit moss grew
on my teeth as a young grimace. gagging,
gagged, literally, caressed by filthy pump and lat spreading beneath diabolical
half-natty lighting, lilac and black rush
of blood. I played gangrene in that one movie. from a fertile sky, an augur
descended, pressed my temples between
its powerful, chalk-covered hands, mouthed the words, lock out. you may be
entitled to compensation, I interviewed
desolation with the rot of youth on my side, we introduced ourselves to or as
a sparkling, delectable humiliation, I keep losing
track, me, one big, endless stretchmark, mobius strip. summering in dank,
dim weightrooms across the land teeming
with the acrid scent of sweat, the smell of ammonia, the smell of rusting iron.
the fools whiled away their lives dipping their hands
in cool, slow-moving rivers, carrying their elder, ailing dogs in their arms like infants,
eating elote at the sea wall at sunset,
butter and Valentina dripping down their chins. measured eccentrics and measured
absence, agents of necessity and masculinity,
the creature dragged bronzed lace across my decollete, told me wicked, conniving,
stabilizing lies, ate away at my neck, I tore
my withered, former carcasses from within and loaded them onto the leg press
and hack squat, delicate and crude and grimacing,
I dropped acid for a few months and deadlifted until I bled from my eye sockets
and transcended, our bodies disagreed with the lives we led, but by then, it was too late.
Patrick Holian (he/him/his) is a Mexican American writer from San Francisco, California. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Saint Mary’s College of California and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Georgia Review, Black Warrior Review, Kenyon Review, The Cincinnati Review, Barrelhouse, Bennington Review, The Acentos Review, Yalobusha Review, and elsewhere. He was a 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s fiction finalist, a finalist for Michigan Quarterly Review’s 2021 Laurence Goldstein Poetry Prize, a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee, and he received a 2025 Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.