Luminous Days poetry zine in collaboration with Anna Mäki-Jyllilä,
published by Fétiche Press and available here
IN OFFERANCE (A FEVER DREAM)
I insert
the glass thermometer
under my furred tongue
it clinks teeth
toasting to my good health
as I resist the urge
to bite down
Mercury is in retrograde again
and I’m home alone
for days on end, not a single word
spoken aloud
from my sick mouth
the mercury informs me
that I am peaking at 38.2°C
somewhere
lovers are telling each other
they’re the perfect temperature
but all they’re feeling
is the warmth
as it leaves.
To know the true heat
the real burning centre
I would kneel beneath you
in a devotional posture
hands clasped
awaiting a liquid
warmed by the glove
of your body
made in thirst
and in wanting–
here I am, in offerance
asking to be bathed
to be soiled and so
to be quenched
o brush my fevered skin
with your humble 37°C,
and cool me off
I am ill.
I rinse the thermometer
under the cool tap
watch the red
slink downwards
like that biro you flip
to see the dress
float off of a lady
Published in Almanac July 2022
SLEEPING AT YOUR PLACE
When it gets late, you sleep on the sofa and I sleep in your bed
it’s like how
waves break
I feel the space that
closeness asks
as a breeze that winds
between us
ruffles your hair and
blows my shirt
taken in
as breath
One day I might see you
in the midst of a
dream
and your face
will be like a mirror
that I am not standing in front of,
and in the morning, you make tea
and we eat breakfast together
Published in Tuli & Savu February 2022
LIGHT WORK
given time,
your touch
makes
light work
of dark
years
they fall
away
and
if only
for a
moment
I am
washed
and I am
untouched
by fear
Published in Tuli & Savu February 2022
CRUISING
Mostly, I think of you with
other men, slinking toward
warm denim in the night.
I’m at home in my pyjamas
wondering what one has to
swallow to arrive and then
how one person might give
another anything. But what
I would offer to be faceless
and other, slammed against
trees and concrete and dirt,
the sap and the milk and the
musk of my body thickening,
as if a life of physical
infringements never was.
Imagine being fucked
for fun?
Published in Tuli & Savu February 2022
WOODY ALLEN
the X they marked as the place where your usefulness lies was
misleading. you’ve been combing out the lice and the lint,
otherwise known as the dirt of what they showed you,
otherwise known as their rot. sunken like graphite from pencil
pushed to thigh, the shape of your body’s yielding but a
pinprick behind skin. you used to show it around, but these
days seldom do. and just as you live with it, so you forget it
was ever otherwise. fury sprouts like a bitter kernel, a smoking
ember, the final hope. if you know how to listen it will tell
you: killing Woody Allen would be inner child work.
Published in Oroboro February 2022
MARGINALIA
I am reading your Anne Carson books now
as if lapping water cupped from your palm
it’s a question of appetite, really
and I gasp it straight to the throat.
In your absence there are fervent annotations
a parallel reading, a fire scribble, a hard intent
I trace an imperceptible dog ear, a pause once,
snaring now. Sloped lines veer wildly
half cross a sentence
I read a mark shaken by a country bus
on the backroad, a pencil gripped
lying down. If the notes start only part way
were you waking up to the words then
startled, aflame?
Just like your old nets cast out
for clues and kinship
(poems Sylvia and Emily
receive especially ardent attention)
I lean towards another you that I will
never know and neither did another me
though we sweep our crumbs from the table daily
– I lick my fingers to turn the page
Published in Fourteen Poems, May 2021