Two Poems

Mouth Ghazal
@ Patrick

Split-lip sizzle of eating your heart whole, god, the gate of my red mouth.
I pled for fist-kiss on my chest, trailer-park-wall-hole we left, your bled mouth.

I loved you wildbeast, brute best, bourbon, Bukowski, baritone blue songs
strung through my hair, your fingers playing small gods on my neck, head, mouth.

I begged, Colossus boy, erect sculptures of you in every hollow of my body.
Look at your wreckage, amor, drink & eat of me, wine-spittle and bread-mouth.

Next, your ram batter, your Axe grind, and I, with no limbs to lust to keep myself,
would offer to lay and be cut through until every language left my lead mouth.

Once, you laughed when your thrust struck speech from my throat, & I laughed
after every way you ended worry, loved the door through which you led; mouth.

I would sleep, one ear mindful of your movement, glow of your phone, end of us
on my wall, our lot’s wife shadow-play, your salt on my tongue, my bred mouth.

You kept other lovers, a clause you should’ve cleared before our contract. “I’m sorry,
Jesús.” I’m not. Pack a bag with all the things you’ve killed. First, my dead mouth.

________

Jesús I. Valles is a queer Mexican immigrant writer-performer from Cd. Juarez, México/El Paso, TX. Jesús is a 2019 Lambda Literary fellow, a 2018 Undocupoets fellow, and a 2018 Tin House scholar. They have received support from Fine Arts Work Center, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Idyllwild Arts, and The Poetry Incubator. Their work is published in The New Republic, Palabritas, The Acentos Review, Quarterly West, Tin House, and BOAAT.