Two Poems

Diagram of the Carnal Male

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Top
It’s not enough to want him open
you have to pry, wrench, lie, spit, sidle
your tongue-noise along his hear-holes, beg
like wolf to pig: I will fry you in your own grease.
It’s just enough to want him open, the rest is in
the finger-mouth-epithet triumvirate, spitting
coarse lies through powdered teeth, wolves
are familiar with the things conceived darkly in estrus but
pigs know their meat is sweet and salt to taste.

Bottom
There are limits, but you do not know them,
do not heed the ache if there’s more to stretch.
There are limits and as you approach them you are full
of light, eyes brave with light and lust when light fails.
There are limits for the pig crying – the wolf
knocking hard, blowing, houses bending, the tender
meat tendered rough from the ham of the beast – satisfaction
lies in the taste of the things prepared darkly.

Flip
There is one language that flesh speaks:
in grunts and gasps, sighs and shudders.

Bottom
If there were limits (which there might or might
not be) they would be somewhere deep, planted
near the dark meat, near the hard knocking center
where the pig cries, voice thick with satisfaction.
And so there are limits, what of them? All the more reason
to stretch, to ache, to search for lust in fading light
and be full
of anything that fills.

Top
Is it enough to want him open? When even prying,
wrenching, lying and spitting gets only inches of you
sliding? His pig-sounds rising like a chorus as you fry
him, his grease pops, his meat softens and burns.
Then again, it’s just enough to spit him, opened
to fingers/mouths/epithets coarse and darkly
powdered, sticky with familiar tastes. The wolf knows
the salted pig is tender to his teeth and best eaten in estrus.

Stages of Possession

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1st

He presses it against you
and it is a constellation:
desire, leche, and the pillow behind your head.

He understands something about you
that need not be said aloud; his smile
is two parts venom and one part venom
substitute – you may call this “adoration.”

He knows and you know this push will not give
into the wet squeeze, the flesh, pucker, adagio..
but the stars are pressed up against you
and you want to crack them open
stare at depth head on.

2nd

“Not tonight” he says
but gets his fingers in you anyway,
smiling and mumbling in Spanish

providing translations in the viscera:
nod yes if you want more pain or
stay quiet if you want more pain, but
do not speak or there will be more pain.

He wonders where your fallow ends
and what you will refuse. His business is breaking
and he has a long, limber night with which to ply his trade.

3rd

By morning you are almost a ghost,
which is to say you are panting
through a mouthful of cotton
and the sun is making the trees incandescent;

greening and glittering. The birds’ chipper notes
are all but irrelevant to the bruising
of your body. You may call it “elevation”
to know how much a man can fuck

without fucking. The question: down your throat,
in your ass, on your chest, on your face, sliding
down your back while you dress for the day?
The catch: your mouth is stuffed with cotton
so the decision is made for you.

4th

There are approximately twenty stops
on the train ride home and you are wet

with another man’s discard. Somewhere
in the back of your mind there is a seed

of shame, but your body is breathless, reeling,
possessed.