this is how i rock my lust: with
***** straight and pixie dust, discussing ****
that ***** me up like drugs
like love
like sucker punches
when she comes—that heady taste—
unblushing, sweaty, **** my face
******* I’m craving
her—the scent—the begging when
she’s hoarse and spent,
the coarseness of rough hair on skin
of taste buds lips tongue wearing thin—
i drain my lungs, i’m going hard
eyes pressed on pelvis filled with stars
i dig my nails into her thighs she’s
in my nose i’m drunk on sighs
and cries/those hips!—
she bites her lips
a flush of rose on rigid ******
pinched between my fingertips—
she calls my name—
i can’t resist—

so kiss me kate, with open legs
spread wide for me to fit my head
between those thighs, my tired tongue
i’d drown here just to hear you come.

i want all of you, each atom. raised eyebrows, those eyes of melted chocolate, the laid-back laugh and the way you speak, dry, dewy,

our bodies wrapped in Debussy, skin tinged with pink, afterglow, quiet laughter in the cocoon of a sparsely-furnished room--clinging tightly, not so tightly, tracing fingertips, foreheads together, soft lips meeting, your warm hand on my waist

then, a dark glare, evil painted in the arch of your eyebrows and the smirk that creeps across your face, pinning me down, thick tongue running the length of my body, hot, wet--

i want to write for you on the morning after, i want you to lick up my words like dessert, i want you to crave more i want you to crave me



i want i want i want

car horns, insistent,
floors away, a soft musical interlude
filling

this room, infused with jasmine,
a candle-wick extinguished, scorched,
soot drifting on

thick air,
cloyed with unspoken tenderness
expressed instead in jewels of sweat,
insistence to eclipse past pleasures,
fingers laced together,
flurries of kisses lasting for as long
as we’re lost in the other’s lips,
lingering touches, too delicate
for casual lovers,

you, washing off my scent
by nightlight, like i am wet with
witchcraft, like my ******* are spells
and if your skin remains stained
you won’t be able to break them,

me, curled in your sheets
like my tongue around you,
waiting for your arm to wrap me up
like a slow-creeping vine
on thin trellis wires.

i’m a communist lover; i redistribute the wealth.
liquid pearl between my thighs,
a treasure chest,
no one deprived.
grasp equal handfuls for yourself.

one cannot yoke and claim me with a ring.
collectivists, share forbidden fruit
of my mother’s labor.
it’s not my habit to exclude:
no prole to ban, no rule of kings.

you have nothing to lose but your chains.

i’m unashamed;
the lot of you can
stake your claim.

i clutch a rose between my lips:
between my thighs,
a pungent fist,
thorn-kiss elicits blood and liquid silk,
stem wet with salty mix

my skin might revel in caresses
from blush blooms and emerald leaves, but
soft petals are ephemeral
and thorns leave marks like chiseled stone

i then am owned—
and not Alone

I.

Auntie’s fingertips were always stained
with the blood of scarlet petunias
in summer, a pile of
wilted blooms in a Pyrex bowl.
This is how they grow so beautiful, she told me,
so when Uncle’s knuckles grew red with her blood
and since she always stayed at his side
i thought it must be the same for people.

II.

Truckin’—got my chips cashed in…
Uncle’s favorite song crackled over the speakers
as I rode in his cab across the state line,
army men in my lap.
A three-fingered hand chucked a lieutenant out the window
into the golden wheat.
I knew he lost those fingers
in some faraway place called Vietnam.

Later that night,
I sat in the empty back of the truck,
nothing to play with,
imagining my lieutenant marching through wheat,
dodging gunfire,
listening to the bang bang bang
as Uncle and the lady he met in the lot
cleaned out the cab.

III.

I came home from Iraq
after losing ******* to an IED
and drove straight to Auntie’s.

We pruned petunias in silence.
She grew purple and black alongside the red now,
velvet flowers the color of her left eye,
of the blossom on her shoulder.

I heard my drill sergeant.
Blood! Blood! Blood makes the grass grow!
Turn this ******* desert into an oasis!—
and I knew why Vietnam was a jungle.

Uncle got home. “Hey, Uncle,” I said,
“how about we go for a drive like old times?”

IV.

I killed the engine next to a wheat field.

“Blood on your hands,” Uncle said.

“I’ve been pruning the petunias with Auntie,” I told him.
“You gotta get rid of the wilted ones
so the plant can grow. Flourish.”

“Naw, I mean, from Iraq,” he said. “Blood. You killed
any men?”

“Not yet,” I said.

V.

Auntie and my boy and I sing along to Bryan Adams
in the cab—
Out on the road today,
I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac;
a voice inside my head says don’t look back,
you can never look back…

He’s got a lap full of Army men.

Across from a field of wheat,
a little patch of grass
blazes emerald in the midday sun.