From “Couplets”

I tried to stay away. Could not. I’d turn to  J

    or T and say: Today’s the day

it stops. Nothing right should feel

    this dirty, nothing real

this quicksilver and fanged. I kept thinking

    of  that show My Strange Addiction,

which was enjoying a comeback among my peers

    in those months, despite its cancellation years

before, conceptual depravity,

    and total exploitation of  its cast. Reality

TV seemed newly relevant, I guess,

    as life itself grew ever more fictitious,

perpendicular to time. Obsession was a subject

    that obsessed me, regardless of  its object,

but I hated to watch strangers being hurt

    by theirs: doll-collecting, surgery, ingesting dirt

and glass. There was no joy depicted—

    just decrepitude, abjection, musty rooms. If  I directed

one, my show would air the pleasures

    of compulsion, and be named Screw It, I’m Going to Text Her,

or  Nothing’s Wrong, You’re  Just in Love Again,

    or True  Life: Turning  Twenty-Eight  in  Brooklyn.