{"id":671,"date":"2022-09-14T13:28:58","date_gmt":"2022-09-14T17:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/?p=671"},"modified":"2022-09-14T13:28:58","modified_gmt":"2022-09-14T17:28:58","slug":"thralldom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/2022\/09\/14\/thralldom\/","title":{"rendered":"Thralldom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saeed Jones explores the idea that sexual intimacy is used to validate sexual orientation in the poem \u201cThralldom\u201d from his collection <\/span>Prelude to Bruise<\/span><\/i>. The first line, \u201cI survived on mouthfuls of hyacinth\u201d sets a tone of sexual rashness. A hyacinth flower somewhat resembles a penis, hence the sexual connotation, and it signifies rashness, especially if the rashness pertains to a game. In Jones’ case, the game is his sexuality and he is rashly performing sexual acts as the \u201cbeauty\u201d of being with another man \u201cis what [he] choked on\u201d. The juxtaposition of something beautiful leading to something painful, like choking, leads me to believe that Jones is recklessly engaging in painful sex in order to feel that his sexuality\u00a0 can be validated as beauty. By claiming that “The beauty is what [he] choked on”, Jones also alludes to the beauty of sexual intimacy. Many queer people that engage in sex, oral or other, feel that there is something ethereal about physically being with someone of the same sex. For Jones, the “beauty” of oral sex is painful as it is “choking” him, but the situation is ethereal to him because it’s with another man. To further add to this opposition of beauty and pain, Jones claims that the men he\u2019s sleeping within have \u201ccruel tongues\u201d yet he asks for \u201c<\/span>more \/ please<\/span><\/i>\u201d. Cruel tongues may be alluding to harsh language rather than an actual physical description as tongues can also be used as a synonym for language.\u00a0 If he is referring to degrading language, then perhaps he is seeking out more degrading language for comfort. As a gay black man, Jones was probably used to degrading language and slurs being thrown at him, which could, oddly enough, cause a sense of comfort in that type of language. Therefore, asking for \u201c<\/span>more \/ please<\/span><\/i>\u201d In the very obviously cruel and painful situation Is a way of Jones acknowledging his sexual orientation during sexually intimate moments.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saeed Jones explores the idea that sexual intimacy is used to validate sexual orientation in the poem \u201cThralldom\u201d from his collection Prelude to Bruise. The first line, \u201cI survived on mouthfuls of hyacinth\u201d sets a tone of sexual rashness. A hyacinth flower somewhat resembles a penis, hence the sexual connotation, and it signifies rashness, especially … Continue reading Thralldom<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4997,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4997"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/lgbtqlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}