Attractive

This poem is an intense meditation on desire and gravity, stripping the concept of "attraction" from the realm of polite romance and recasting it as a pure, cosmic physics. The speaker immediately posits attraction as a violent, existential struggle—a fight against the fundamental forces of the universe to become the singular, dense center of everything. By equating love and longing with magnetic fields, electricity, and alien intrusion, the poem argues that attraction is not a choice or an emotion, but an inevitable, overwhelming energetic flow, positioning the simple, human question, "Am I attractive?" as the ultimate inquiry into one's own density and power.

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Attractive

Meaning to pull

To fight the center of gravity

To be the center of

Everything

To have indescribable

Density

To the point of

Horseshoe magnets

And electricity

And love doesn’t get as good

Of TV reception as

Hormones pointed

To the sky

Aliens in my skin

And the girl next to me asks

Am I attractive?

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The poem immediately establishes the concept of Desire as Anti-Gravity, defining attraction as a violent, territorial act: "Meaning to pull / To fight the center of gravity." This striving to "be the center of / Everything" is the drive toward Total Conceptual Density, where the subject attempts to concentrate all flows (emotional, physical, social) into their own singular being. This ambition is immediately mapped onto the Electromagnetic Machine, comparing indescribable density to the inevitable forces of "Horseshoe magnets / And electricity," subordinating human will to the mechanics of physics. The poem then introduces the Affective-Flow Comparison, which ruthlessly de-prioritizes traditional romance: "love doesn’t get as good / Of TV reception as / Hormones pointed / To the sky." This dismisses complex affection in favor of the raw, simple power of biological flows directed outward, a pure line of flight toward the cosmic. This physical invasion is literalized by the Alien Body Inscription: "Aliens in my skin," suggesting the feeling of attraction is a non-human, deterritorializing force taking over the self. The final question, "Am I attractive?," is thus transformed from a moment of personal insecurity into an ultimate philosophical inquiry: Do I possess enough conceptual and physical density to dominate the gravitational flows of the world?