Little Beast

“Little Beast” is love poem, or a so-called anti-love poem, written in the lyric form. It’s a lyric poem because it’s personal and emotional, and it’s an anti-love poem because it flips the traditional concept of a love poem on its head. It expresses Siken’s thoughts on a stormy relationship. In the profile on the Poetry Foundation’s website, Siken concedes that a boyfriend who died significantly influenced the poems in Crush. Siken insists that he is not the speaker of this poem or any of the poems in the book. Since Crush won two awards for gay poets, it’s reasonable to refer to the speaker as he, although Siken isn’t opposed to readers assigning the speaker a different gender. Siken’s speaker narrates a passionate yet violent romance with another man. The poem is a testament to a ferocious, energetic affair.

At first, the theme of violence is subtle. The presence of the barbecue and courthouse in Line 1 allude to flesh, bodies, and punishment. The aching radio in the next line hints at pain and hurt. By Line 4, the theme of violence is explicit. The speaker says the night is considering stabbing him and his partner and leaving their dead bodies “in a dumpster” (Line 5). The violence intrigues the speaker. “That’s a nice touch,” he says (Line 6). The casual diction demonstrates that the speaker is on familiar terms with violence. He talks about it as if it’s as pleasantly common as alcohol and affection—“whiskey and kisses” (Line 6). The speaker’s rhetoric suggests trauma, and the poem’s juxtaposition of victim and victimizer underscores th poem’s complex view of violence. The speaker also mentions “stains" in reference to the BBQ, but stains also symbolize other elements in the stanza. The stains represent both people and their desires, the kisses in the night and the desire that stems from this partying and kissing.

Stanza 2 revolves around the image of a mysterious man on the freeway. The man eats a fruit pie with a buck knife. Hypothetically, the man could eat the fruit pie with a fork or a regular knife, but the man uses a hunting knife. The buck knife makes the man primal and violent. The speaker watches the man carve the “likeness of his lover’s face into the motel wall” (8). This image magnifies the man’s forcefulness. He openly expresses his lust and imposes it on his surroundings. The willful man enthralls the speaker. “I want to be like him,” he confesses (Line 9). It’s important to note here that the speaker likes the man AND wants to be like him. He both wants to be harmed and wants to do the harming, meaning he is both victim and victimizer. This underscores the subtext of trauma, abuse, violence, and culpability that runs throughout the poem.

The third stanza steps away from imagery. It features a verbal exchange between the speaker and his romantic partner. Stanza 3 marks the first appearance of the speaker’s specific romantic partner. It’s as if the man carving his lover’s face into the wall encouraged the speaker to talk about his particular lover. In Stanza 3, the speaker’s tone is dismissive, passive-aggressive, and snide. “Someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure,” the speaker quips (Line 10). In the next line, the speaker adds more sarcasm: “I’m sure you remember, I was on the phone with you, sweetheart.”

In Stanza 3, the speaker communicates in the past tense. In Stanza 4, the speaker delves into the past via the theme of history. The speaker juxtaposes a past idea about history—“History repeats itself” (Line 1)—with two peculiar images of history. The contrast heightens the eccentricity of the images. It also expands upon a couple of themes: consumption and illegibility.

First, a shadow is attached to history. The shadow seeps into the desktop, the sock drawer, the socks in the sock drawer, and a cache of hidden letters. The shadow, like history, infects, compromises, and consumes. Next, history becomes a “little man in a brown suit” (Line 15). The man attempts to “define a room he is outside of.” The image leaves the man separate and atomized. The image also symbolizes bureaucracy, or the weight of authority. The speaker suggests that the man sees things neatly and plainly, like with his brown suit. He makes decisions but is outside the realm of those decisions. The lovers, however, and despite being privy to the room, are kept outside of the realm and are messy: they can’t be defined or contained by the little man (history). Similar to the little man, the lovers of the poem stand apart. They’re not easily identifiable because their names aren’t a part of history. It’s as if the men are too wild and chaotic to be contained by history. Their animalism precludes them from civilization. This also suggests how, historically, being gay has been discussed, defined, demonized, and made illegal by individuals who, like the little man, aren’t affected by those definitions. Despite history’s attempt to define the speaker and his love interest, the lovers defiantly stand outside of history’s reach. Their love has all the indicators of toxic love, but the toxicity, which they embrace, is not because of their sexual orientation.

In Stanza 5, the speaker details his wild and chaotic attraction for the man. The diction is primal, as the noted traits are exclusively physical. The speaker underscores the “bestial” attraction with a simile: “Everyone could see the way his muscles worked, / the way we look like animals” (Lines 26-27). The speaker’s desire ties into the themes of hunting and consumption. In Line 30, the speaker desires to get his “hands inside” the man then “drive” his “body into his like a crash test car.” The speaker wants to eviscerate the man like a hunted animal. He aims to become one with him like a tangled car wreck. For the speaker, love is obliteration and conflict. It’s “suicide” (Line 35) and “struggling at the bottom of the pool” (Line 36). The speaker also brings up struggle and sleeping, suggesting sleep apnea and nightmares. Sleep apnea happens when breathing starts and stops during sleep. Those with this sleep disorder have trouble breathing, and it can affect the mood. The speaker and his lover even face violence in their sleep state, a place normally reserved for rest and dreams. The speaker also underscores just how violent sex can be. Images of penetration, death, the chase, and being breathless all tie the physicality of sex to drowning (being breathless) and gutting a hunted animal. Sex is beautiful, the speaker says, but it can also be a self-inflicted lesson in pain.

The lust loses its intensity in Stanza 6. The diction is melancholy, and the tone is rueful. The “old dull pain” (Line 39) replaces the fresh excitement of the previous stanza. The speaker misses the thrill of recklessness, a sentiment that suggests a person with trauma or addiction. The “stitched wrists and clammy fingers” (Line 39) suggest a healing body under control, not a precarious body consumed by chaos. When the lovers catch their reflection, they don’t find “doorways” to new experiences but only their eyes. The eyes don’t symbolize anything galvanizing. In Stanza 6, the lovers’ capacity for strong lust significantly diminishes. Yet there is still the potential even here for desire. The speaker likens the lover’s scars to “train tracks” (Line 46), a comparison that both romanticizes self-harm and suggests that these scars lead to a destination of some sort.

For Stanza 7, the couple attempts to rekindle their passion, but their surroundings do them in. Siken juxtaposes the groping lovers with icy roads and windows “laced with frost” (Line 50). The frigid diction indicates that their love has irreversibly cooled. The speaker is “sleepless” (Line 51), and his lover lacks the “lullabies” (Line 52) to help him. In other words, the two can’t fulfill their needs together. Yet the speaker remains amazed at how attractive his partner was: “But damn,” exclaims the speaker (Line 53). The speaker describes his lover as a “slender boy with a handgun, / a fast car, a bottle of pills” (Lines 54-55). The association of images advances the idea that love is a mix of danger and intoxication.

Stanza 8 serves up a realization. The speaker hasn’t gotten his “money’s worth” (Line 56). Despite the pain and violence, the speaker is unfulfilled. “[W]e can’t punch ourselves awake,” the speaker admits (Line 61). Violence has its limits. A person can’t beat themselves or be beaten into a higher state of consciousness. The unruly atmosphere has devolved into apologies and separateness. The blood in the lover’s mouth is not the speaker’s; it’s the lover’s. They’re not mixing; they’re apart. The end-stop here (“I wish it was mine.”  [Line 63]) also suggests that the speaker wishes the lover was still his because the line refers to the blood: “about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.” The speaker continues with the desire to be a part of this violent world the lovers have created. He wants even the blood.

The final stanza is one line long. Line 64 juxtaposes the speaker’s dramatic idea of love with quaint reality. “I couldn’t get the boy to kill me,” confesses the speaker. The speaker wasn’t consumed or obliterated. However, the speaker did wear his lover’s “jacket for the longest time.” The stormy poem ends with a romantic image of the speaker in his boyfriend’s coat. The image normalizes the tempestuous relationship. He wanted to both consume and be consumed, but he’ll settle for the suggestion of romance. Perhaps Siken is saying violent desire is as conventional as putting on a lover’s jacket. Then again, maybe Siken is expressing the belief that wearing a lover’s coat—especially a violent lover—can be as transgressive and consuming as death.