Matthew Buxton


i-15

 

goes all the way to las vegas, and probably further, but

i only take it all

 

the way to utah county. i always tell people never to go

that far south because it’s trump territory

 

a whole county cinched in some red-laced corset

that makes me conscious of my breaths

 

when wearing my gold nose ring around

there. i only take the highway that far

 

to take dick from the kid who took my virginity.

we both went on mormon missions

 

and we both left them early

because we were hungry for cock. i drove

 

the 45 minutes to him so we could reminisce over

shared religious trauma over

 

korean noodles before he fucked me over

his twin xl bed in his byu dorm. we stopped

 

because it fucking hurt and i didn’t know

how to prep for bottoming. he said first times

 

are always weird, and that i should take PrEP

because it’s free.

 

nothing costs more than the toll your

pride takes when you shit on someone’s dick,

 

especially when you have to sit in

traffic next to the empty toll-free lane on the way home.

 

two years later, they finally finished the construction

on i-15, and those two lanes finally have room

 

to breathe.

my college boyfriend wanted to break up

 

to work on himself, but we both knew he knew

i was on grindr

 

because he didn’t love me like he used to.

i only knew the roads were finally fixed when i rushed

 

on the highway in some red-strapped jock

because byu boy at least had a half

 

hour to fuck me outside an industrial site

in provo–past all the temples

 

with their little gold men topping

the steeples. i let that fuckboy top me

 

in the back of my mom’s suv,

because there is nowhere further for me to go.

 

Matthew Buxton is originally from Salt Lake City, Utah and is a current undergraduate at Emory University studying Chemistry and English & Creative Writing. His work can be found in Alloy Literary Magazine, Prodigal Press, and poets.org where he is the 2021 Academy of American Poets Prize winner for Emory University. He plans to pursue an MFA in poetry after college.