Tim Barrus Blog
-
ferris wheel of rust
![]()
we were insomniacs
who played on an
abandoned ferris
wheel whose pendulum
in appalachian rain
was one blind eye and
sullen just like you
and weary where your
skin leaked raw and
your bones in the dark
were soup inside your
nerves to be so high
such as we were…
-
One Photographer
Nothing but this foolishness.
-
Gay in the KKK
![]()
March thinks no one knows.
We all know.
We’ve always known.
We’re all kinda over March and his Big Secret.
When March wants to go get fucked, he heads off to Atlanta in his pickup.
March thinks no one in Atlanta knows.
They all know.
They’re kinda over March as…
-
On Being Abandoned
I have never met a kid doing sex work who was not sexually abused, or abandoned in some way, and, likely, both.
It was bone fucking cold. Michigan in the winter. I begged my parents for at least a sweater. That was when they sat me down, I had no…
-
This Is What Anxiety Looks Like On Its Way To Outer Space
this is what anxiety looks like on its way to outer space/ it bounces off and then consumes the room/ any room/ you could rip your heart out, and then leap into the snow/ even your bones are clenched/ your butt hole went metallic years ago/ the pacing has worn…
-
but you have no wings…
you have always had this breathtaking ability to jump right over all the stuff that bores you as you have always called it the bullshit of life/ you do not go around anything old or tired or useless/ you go over it as if flight might be an option but…
-
Tim Barrus in the New York Times: Voyeurism
![]()
Voyeurism Does Not Mean Exhibitionism
My students have HIV. Being tracked to an HIV clinic – repeatedly – draws inferences that are damaging in terms of enormous stigma. People infected are easily tracked by a government eager to know everything. Including who their friends are and where those friends live.…
-
The Crows of Candybar Town
the crows from around here are all from candybar town/ they never sweep the floor or make their beds on the front porch/ the crows sing songs from the seychelles in french/ their lives on the ground in crumbs runs outward, sideways, then up to the tops of trees/ they…
-
There Are Things Under Rocks, And Our Backs Are Broken
We now live in a small town in the Blue Ridge mountains. As with most of Appalachia, people live in hollows. A hollow is like a hidden furrow on the planet. It would be possible to live in a hollow and never come out.
It’s that isolated. There are things…
-
And I am Here to Tell You
![]()
today, sunspots appeared when you go whizzing by tender in the
shadows/ the horror of your existence will not die in a legion
of soldierships where the seal you have tightened up so you might
live between what souls have seen as their assignment beginning
with how you died at…