"Cocksucker" by Jie Venus Cohen

Cocksucker

         After Sylvia Plath

Old stories from southern American 
landscapes tell the tale of men who chase the 
tails of young farmer boys in their Sunday 
best. These men work fervently from dusk ‘till dawn 
vampiring the hairy dairy farmer 
of his milky seed, seducing the cow- 
sons and hen-pecked husbands. Chipping away 
holy hegemony, alias: fag— 

So as fables say, The Cocksucker moves 
masked from normal man’s sight, cloaked in musky 
oxblood leather, well-named, ill-famed, giving 
escapism necessary for the 
rural and repressed, star-spangled climate 
of closeted hayseeds and their fathers.

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Audio: Jie Venus Cohen reads “Cocksucker”

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Jie Venus Cohen is a mixed, intersex//trans writer and author of poetry chapbook VENUS LIMBS ('25, Thirty West Publishing). They are a 2026 Tin House Scholar, a 2025 LAMBDA Literary fellow, and have received support from Kenyon Review, Anaphora Arts, Mount Holyoke College, and others. Their work has been recognized in Seventh Wave, The Tulane Review, DIAGRAM, The Offing, The Minnesota Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, Strange Horizons, The Ex-Puritan, Singapore Unbound, POETS.org, etc. They read poetry for Electric Literature and are a folio co-editor at ANMLY Lit.

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