Self-Portrait as the Musical Score from a Slasher
a cue / of what’s to come / a presence / lurking / like when you were a kid / everything a version of something else / a TV show / a movie / a song on the radio / which you listened to / by a swimming pool / in a car / in your bed / room / life through a lens / like that video camera your father got for Christmas / make believe / believe anything you want / anything is possible / a boy can be / what? / not anything / not a housewife / not too fem / not with hands that move that way / or that way / not with a scream too high-pitched / no scream at all / a cue / a sound / like your musical idols / all women / angst and heartbreak / booming through your childhood / then teenage years / those Rolling Stone magazines / Brad Pitt in a dress / in 1999 / your bedroom window cracked open / midwestern summer nights / blazing outside / that blue light buzzing the mosquitos dead /
Appears in Final Slash Boy (Broken Sleep Books, 2026)
Audio: Stephen S. Mills reads “Self-Portrait as the Musical Score from a Slasher”
Stephen S. Mills (he/they) is the author of the Lambda Award-winning book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices (2012) as well as A History of the Unmarried (2014), Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution (2018), and most recently Final Slash Boy (2026). His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Fourteen Poems, The Los Angeles Review, and others. Two of his books were placed on the Over the Rainbow List compiled yearly by the American Library Association. He is also the author of the plays Waiting for Manilow and Is That All There Is? He is a 2026 recipient of the BRIO Award from Bronx Council on the Arts. He lives in New York City.
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