Rhyheim

Rhyheim: A Porn Poem is a beautiful book of eroticism, of desire and of the longing for intimacy. The book-length poem can be read as a devotional to the gay porn star Rhyheim Shabazz. The speaker, a queer-of-colour poet in a majority white and straight Norway, finds support, inspiration, and excitement in Rhyheim’s porn. It is clear in Vikram Kolmannskog’s writing that pornography is rooted within bodies that have histories, that are themselves sites of cultural, economic, racial, and gendered identities and experiences. The poem goes beyond this, however, as Vikram weaves together porn and poetry, the sensual and the spiritual, inviting us to be both turned on and touch compassion and wisdom.