ISSUE: Summer 2018
Prelude
His teeth are lilies bursting from asphalt—white, many petaled opulences;
amid danger, there is also beauty. When he whips me with the riding crop
of his tongue, I curl into the earth’s first question: To desire what exactly?
He has nothing
to offer but kisses & semen. Cold inamorato of my nights, he whets flesh,
thrashes above me like a black bough. As iron sharpens iron, he sharpens
me. The first time I barely had the luxury of screaming so I submitted
like any good catamite. At my master’s thrust, I was hinged to hush.
First Offering
Like any good
catamite, I was
hinged to hush.
My hole, a rosen
halo. I flickered
a month of blood.
And what is this
masochism that I
keep coming back
& coming back
for more, no less?
The answer, simple:
To enter the wild
void of seismic desire
while still wanting
us to arrive
at an answer
together.
Second Offering
I want us to arrive at an answer together.
When he moans
like a lilting contralto, I want to be taken
up there with him. My ass in the air, wet with deception.
Thus, his ceaseless pivot. This other tongue
of his which offers me no mercy—
Felled lark, that I am. My plumage,
disheveled. Here, in his cage reeking of precum & loud,
there is an ecstasy I still can’t seem to reach.
Third Offering
And so, there is
an ecstasy I can’t
reach. In sleep, he sinks
lilies into me.
My body, his place-
holder for grief.
I am struck songlet
& aviary.
He hit me & it felt
like a kiss. I spit
a swarm of blood-
phlegm on a rose-
wood stump. It leaks
like rubies down
the lanced side
of his Christ.
The hole in my face
is a burning bush—
A lush thicket
of common sex.
Envoi
I dig deep into the soil’s sex. I draw out
a black-earth tongue. Like tenebrous ice,
it dissolves; a mercy & so a quickening.
—considering Gabriele D’Annunzio
