So, I used cum in a poem.
Yes, you know:
spunk, jizz, leche,
or as the medical professional
might say, semen.
I used cum in the poem
I submitted to your workshop,
a poem about how my mother
demanded I stop writing
gay poetry. In this poem
about a poem I doubled down
on the gay,
dripping with the cum.
My mother had demanded I stop
when she caught me
on the family computer
rubbing one out
to what, thanks to her not wearing glasses,
she thought was a man fucking a woman.
It was actually role play
of a Roman soldier, balls deep
in another Roman soldier.
So, of course, she deserved my wanting
to write her a gay poem.
Professor, I’ll own that I was nineteen
and the poem, like most of mine then,
wasn’t that good. But that isn’t the point—
you said I shouldn’t use cum in the poem—
cum would dampen
my point,
cum would mean people wouldn’t take
me seriously.
Oh hell, seriously,
I love cum. I love seeing a guy cum.
I love using cum as lube.
I’m gay. I’m super gay.
I’m flamboyant,
and I’ll always say cum
before I say semen,
but I occasionally might use man
juice instead.
You suggested a substitution: seafoam,
froth washing up on the beach.
It could stand in for cum
and wouldn’t that be an elevated approach?
And I couldn’t stop
thinking then of how seafoam,
or how froth, doesn’t even look like cum.
If cum looked like froth,
I’d think penicillin were in order.
Cum is cum. Cum is cum.
And when I use cum, I mean cum.
Cum can’t become seafoam
in my poems, but I can becume
a nasty cum-loving faggot
behind closed doors, in dark rooms.
And even this young faggot
knew that sometimes
a poem begs for a facial.
Professor,
think of describing a good fuck
as waves slamming against the shore.
You see, right?
Metaphor isn’t not always the answer.
Dustin Brookshire (he/him) is the author of five chapbooks and the forthcoming full-length poetry collection For All of Us Faggots (Iron Oak Editions, 2027). He’s the editor of the 2025 Lambda Literary Award finalist When I Was Straight: A Tribute to Maureen Seaton (Harbor Editions, 2024) and co-editor of Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing, 2023). Curator of the Wild & Precious Life Series, find him online at dustinbrookshire.com.
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Heavy Feather Review 