​some how

By [jp/p]

   thin bellies
   became epitomes
   and slick legs
   led to slicker thighs
   became sexy
 
((
   someone said from the dark recesses)
   it is good)                        
 
   and
   the boys rejoiced
   without thinking a thought.

---

hold my holy belly

By [jp/p]

hold my holy belly — please or thanks
     (hand over hand over unctuous hand)
black as boiling blood is inky as viscous time
     (hold me like a hopeless wartime gauze ball)
my tawny back taut, raw — cemented to your chest
     (clutch me like a pressure cuff; kiss my ebbing pulse)
like you're stanching old starlight & squeezing boiling marbles
     (every lonely photon, every mag-wave angling, to impregnate)
so that

when our voltaic baby dissipates
       as asyllabically as arctic sugar cubes
       over nebulous ejections & interstellar absinthe
       — curse no sterilized christ or ten-winged cheraphim,
let me

smooth your sooty chest —  ​
                              pluck the notes of your bony harp
            lay my ear to the thing that insists on wishing
      bang my broken fists against the snare and bass
                               gnaw your cuticles myself; til blood is gold, the exit-bolt
                          swirl your mossy fingers, your soggy toes inside my mouth
        — tell me

to draw an ocean fit for phosphorescent plesiosaurs
     (pen the length & width of my midriff, my hips — & sigh)
etch a song, some animal, some thought-experiment onto me
     (hand you kaleidoscopic needles to release my baleen beasts)
to swim their lifetimes around my cheesecake-Cheez-It waist
     (take refuge in the shadowed harbors of my breasts)
 swallow whole my musky, murky, muddy shallows
     (from the wiry apex of my river-birch thighs)
to plumb the Mariana depth of my umbilical
     (watch them watching you watch me)
let them

let you believe
that our aching bodies
and our suicidal minds
are just salt in the meringue
the auroral oases
peppery starlight pangs
more asymmetric asylums
to tickle our turnstiles
our seven senses
silly
​

---

these mineral men

By [jp/p]

there’s a line in the sky
 
a slanted scar
s t r e t c h e d
s   o     f   a   r
over the horizon
 
you can see it coming
from any frazzled angle
 
it’s as long and thin — 
even longer and thinner
than any cobalt seam
you’ve seen or unseen
 
your tongue’s so wet for it
just the peculiar weight of it
hung on the sunset’s stitch
like a parabolic crucifix
 
a skin-taut cotton candy and
it’s not just you wagging for it
 
threaded through a beatific,
ice-riot sky: grit and glassine
 
mirrored
 
by the 60,000 souls (or so
{none of x and all of y}) below
 
pissing away their days, their
fatigued fists all angry & swollen
with the retrograde void of
cutting leaves all day and
 
going home
to someone else’s home
anyone else’s spouse, so
 
it’s not that they’re dust — not
just — but they’re hoarse with
hope and its morbid failure to
own a home before they’re 50
 
to afford more than groceries
and obsolescent gadgets, or
else:
 
force hope at gunpoint
to maintain all else:
 
a
strong & sustained,
skyline-visible
erection

---

Inches

By [jp/p]

It's always just rabbits — shifting,
springing through toasted thickets.   
 
Sometimes I turn & it's just a leaf.
Skating on a wind, cutting its teeth.
 
It's never my next-to-last breath;
it's forgivable: wasted adrenaline.
 
Still I see shadows. I hear catcalls.
They detach me, slowly erode me.
 
But tonight is easy — so few eyes,
so few pulses. I’m so close to alone.
 
A cricket trills & trills — warns me  
of a blind spot: a lobsterman, hard.   
 
In his pocket, maybe it’s just a claw;
or he’s fingering change — or not.
 
Good for him, I say. He's staying put.
He doesn't advance, doesn't mutter.
 
More standstill men deserve rewards.
Maybe evolution is just inch by inch.

---

[jp/p] is a black, queer, neurodiv soul living on the craggy shores of Maine; the misty-eyed, evergreen stretches of Washington; and the godforsaken flatlands of Texas, where even grey grass is possible. Their work has appeared in Stoneboat Literary Journal, Lighthouse Weekly and Miniskirt Magazine. Seven poems are forthcoming in Eunoia Review and Cephalopress Anthology.