fifth floor walk-up.
There is a seizure of you
/ inside me / / /
mouth charcoal
gargling gag gag gag gag gaggaggaggaggaggaggaggaggaggag
but you have paid me by the hour
and we have twenty minutes
more.
Here, humans have spandex skin
local businesses branding backs.
Here, sky sutures mountains between clouds
and there are thirteen shades of
tree and soil.
While five floors up
in parking garage in suburban vehicle,
my knees bruise against upholstered floor.
After, you put mint in your mouth as though
my sucking your dick changed your breath
somehow.
With you, there are no words beyond
what you order, which is the same each time.
I am fast-food menu minus discounts and
dipping sauces
I am still pulling out carpet threads
from parts of my skin
I have given away.
Later, thunder & homework
& formulating words with an aftertaste
of the cash register between your legs.
1.
I didn’t understand why you needed to pay me.
You had jesus christ abdominal muscles and all your hair.
You were young enough to remind me that you hadn’t married yet
but considered proposing to your girlfriend who lives long distance.
You told me my hair was pretty and I was pretty but not like
your girlfriend is pretty;
she is beautiful, you said.
All of your furniture matched and you had fancy pillows on your bed
and I wondered how long-distance this girlfriend really was.
I only saw you that one time and I can still remember
that your semen tasted expensive.
Like your tan.
Like citrus.
You purchased your cigarettes off the internet.
Each time you tried to slide your spit into my mouth, I turned my head.
Your tongue, like cured salami. Like nicotine-drenched faucet.
You had the smallest cock of any man I had ever seen and I was grateful for this.
I closed my eyes and imagined it as a clit as a poem as a Lou Reed song as a mountain.
With your dick inside me, I read every book by Kathy Acker, meditated to Philip
Glass, alphabetized my grocery list and record collection.
I cut myself in half, zigzagged and charred flesh while you
pumppumppumped
and I pretended to notice.
You were the last one.
The ink on my wrist told you I was a poet, so you asked me to read you
something.
I chose the queerest piece I had because I wanted you to feel left out.
When you asked if I was gay, I segued into menu option number four.
Outside, the storm covered everything in snow
Inside, I was ice melting disappearing from the weight of you.
You kept calling me your girlfriend
even after you walked me three blocks to an ATM to extract cash.
Called me girlfriend as you linked your nude, callused fingers
against my gloved ones.
Called me girlfriend as I watched you count all those twenties
before folding them up and hiding them in my ripped jacket pocket.
In a thing in a place where some stuff happened
Everyone says it smells like ketchup
They say just close your eyes and when he spreads you open,
you are in Piha with black sand and volcanic ghost beneath you
—just let him in it’s easier this way—
Have you ever worn your bones inside out,
dipped tongues over lungs to taste the weight of your breaths,
you can feel this, just close, just close your eyes
it will be over it will be over it will be over.
You first learned how with that boy in his bedroom and that movie
starring Reese Witherspoon in the background,
while somewhere in another room,
his mother whistled something ironic.
Years later, you can still taste that boy’s dirt
that boy’s sperm
that boy’s fingernails digging into your scalp
pushing you onto onto onto him.
You still don’t know where to put your allergies when strangers
sit their itches between your knees; no one needs to know about
that time you sewed a Santoku knife behind your teeth and
just bit. Down.
Everyone says it will go away,
it it it it it it it it it it it it it it it
you will turn invisible,
your skin will be too loose to hold onto,
no one will try again.
But you say there is no such thing or place
where this stuff
suddenly stops
and you are no longer evidence to break into.