my crotch itches

Her joke: Maybe you have crabs!

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Inside me a copper anchor 

plunks

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I float to the bathroom 

first pube I pluck: 

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glassy legs scamper in place

body fat & maroon with my blood

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In the shower 

hours in 

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naked 

infested like me

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she caresses my skin

keeps finding more nits 

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salt specks 

stuck to my pits   bush   chest   scalp   ass 

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unhatched shafts of hair 

only she can see

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Tweezing my hole 

she sighs This is love 

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I wince at her touch 

how she culls

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my unborn brood 

bred from my blood 

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I am losing 

my love 

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Yes 

I am the father

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crab 

I clawed what I could 

I lather my lover 

with poison 

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and she lathers 

me 

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Two lovers hunting 

for life 

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we haven’t yet killed 

“I am going to be sexy today.” This is what celebrities say in the morning, on the toilet, after proffering a perfectly unoffensive shit. Their bidet warbles a love song—then what? Some mornings I think I am sexy enough to be a celebrity. It’s 1992, East Village, and I’m Chloë Sevigny. A fashion editor discovers me because I am just. That. Cool. I am going to be sexy today, and there I am, at night, in a mirror speckled with saliva flung from floss stuck in my teeth. Some nights I care so little. Some nights the world seems so oversized, so terrible, I think: Go. Go ahead, teeth. Go on and rot, you shitty little teeth. You’re yellow anyways. Teeth are the strongest bones, and there are nights I remember this pedestrian fact, self-satisfied, the way a sexually deprived person recalls a good fuck. Some nights I just have to say, Look, I’m fuckable, and no, it’s not my strongest bone, but it’s a bone and here I am, standing. How many bones do sexy people have, and are teeth included? My mouth has plenty of space, enough for four wisdom teeth and one simply stunning gap between my front teeth and, don’t you know, every dentist relishes telling me what I already know: I still have a baby tooth. I never forget it’s there but I always forget where exactly it is, and—oh, how dental professionals luuuhve tacking my X-rays to the wall, gesturing at my skeleton smile, thinking they’re the first to discover what makes me different from the rest. If I’ve had a dozen dentists fawn over my mouth, does that make me a slut? The last one was Russian and brusque—the first to tell me I’d lose it, the baby. “It has no rrroot,” she says. “But it’s cute, right? I mean it’s adorable,” I explain. “My youth,” I explain. “My tooth,” I explain. She scribbles notes. “The baby tooth is sexy. I am going to be sexy today.” She leaves. Dentists always neglect how much I grind my teeth, how I’ve whittled down my canine to a stub. What does it take to get attention these days? One night I grind so hard I wake up to plastic swimming in my mouth; I’ve shattered my mouthguard. The hot dentist fondles what he made and I’ve destroyed. “You must be tough,” he says. “Tough, or stressed.” I quip that I’m both, the way a sexy person might. The dentist’s forearms are hairy and tan, and they flex as he presses putty into my teeth. I want to purr like a kitty cat, to say something devastating, like, Doctor, I can’t help it, being difficult, but after he fingers my mouth the putty chases its roof, and I can no longer speak. “You know what they’re finding? They’re finding Botox—Botox!—can stop people like you from grinding their teeth. Botox. Riiiight here.” He’s gunning his fingers to my jaw, to the spot that so often pops and feels sore. I nod, drooling. He tells me the putty needs to dry, so I nod again. He leaves the room, and I am left alone, mouth agape. I nod. I keep nodding, saying in silence what I mean in noise. Yes, I know. Yes, I know. Because someday, someday I’ll be beautiful.  

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 cleaving our curtains 

you & I 

    carve 

this sliver of seeing

     all 

  but a face 

yours

  mine 

your towel & mine 

white flags 

              hung

 not 

    from hook 

      but rod 

           this yes 

          fag

             wet 

we lather 

       so we can get 

                    filthy

  watch me 

             desecrate soap

  my musk 

 thick as my

    bush 

                pits

      chest 

 coiled black 

thickets I froth

          hey 

    headless horseman 

    I am your 

    headless horseman

what we ride 

         is the tensile air 

  warped 

 by these cocks 

we frot

from this distance

      steam wefted 

       with no

   the law 

   of repulsion

 alike poles repel  

I jiggle my ass 

    gape my hairy hole

              open  

   hey 

headless horseman  

          a hole is a hole

sometimes I am 

a girl 

      not good

I am gooning 

for good 

 you are my lover 

    what 

              headless hunk

can’t love me 

in heat 

 keep stroking 

with me 

cum 

  with me 

keep 

watching me

    I know 

when we cum 

we leave 

  so what if you 

watched my bare feet  

    scrape 

broken tiles  

     hey headless horseman 

I 

      split 

my sole open 

hey headless horseman 

    my gash 

 is gushing 

    hey headless horseman

I am dam 

   bursted and busted   

  watch me 

      watch 

my bad blood

                          drain  

blue 

    as a scream

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I am applying for the role of FuqboiBoyToy. I am pleased to inform you my irrepressible DaddyIssues magnetize me to men like you, who perceive me as fuckable, expendable, and/or easily charmed. I am confident my 20+ years “as” a straight man arm me with the shame needed to succeed in this role. In turn, my gay desires—repressed all those years—have made me so horny that I often can’t think straight. (Pun intended, hahaha!) 

My background makes me optimally restless and reckless. When a nice man arrives in my life, I will pay him no mind. The first man who ever fucked me was a fuqboi. I, his cloying BoyToy. That night, he threw my legs behind my head and ate my ass. His flickering eyes and oyster mouth scared me, but I didn’t let anything scare me. When his dancer legs pythoned my legs I thought with sudden clarity This is how women get raped. But I never said that aloud. Instead, I rode his cock, cartoonishly large. I apologized when I got poop on his sheets. I took a shower. I let him fuck me again. I chased this fuqboi for months. What makes me a prime candidate for the FuqboiBoyToy role is not only my penchant for self-blame but also my faith in others’ redemption. 

As your FuqboiBoyToy, I promise to be slut for your story. Unreturned texts titillate me, as do secrets. If you slit a cow’s throat on Snapchat, I will reply simply: Wow. If your roommate unexpectedly comes home, I will wait in your bedroom and not make a peep. I am adept at contorting myself to meet the demands of an extramarital affair, especially if you are straight. I will buy the beers you like, drive an hour to your office, temper my nerves/anger when you ghost me, heed your eventual text (Office manager won’t leave, drive somewhere else), wait in a sad gas station, endure the radio news: wildfires rage, Israel bombs, floods flood. My eagerness to tune out the world’s demise means I will seamlessly untether myself from sorrow whenever you summon me back. 

You will make a mess only I can clean. You won’t remember my name— 

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for Flora

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After the tyrants conspire, after they bludgeon they siphon they flame flame kill they piss they belch they wealth shit scream they snarl they callous they yell they yell they refuse to utter an ouch—after the ocean fractures like glass, and the sky purples with welts, and all of us die—what’s left? Friend, I don’t know. Am I supposed to say love? You are heartbroken. My love, I must admit: I, too, am baffled by love. What is love? Baby don’t hurt me. Don’t hurt me. No more…—that 90s song. SNL skit, Jim Carrey jering his neck. Who knows. I woke up so tender today. Needing to cry, I didn’t. You’ve cried all day. I want to dance and sing for you, to hug you, but you are 4,000 miles away. You want to love but lately you’ve tripped, fallen down two mountains. Oh, what is love? Well, sometimes I run—toward strangers, anyone, anything that’ll make me feel good. You’ve seen me rim tajin from my cocktail glass, flutter my hair, musk the air with my pits. Dantaayyy, they’ll say. And you’re a poet!? By then I’m tuna tartare for these men and not-men whose lips cradle my raw, the cure of my pink—whose lips curl and unfurl, parentheses ( ) all yonic all cave all hasty cocoon encasing my tang. It’s a grammar I’ve learned to live with—my wantwantwant. My love, what I’m really saying is: I’m lost, too. Like you I get nauseous, feeling my heart—its acrobat army, trapezing chambers and valves—how many die, nosedive, never granted a net. Ouch, ouch. That video: You and her, fondlefondle, tits titting, mouths gaping like koi. She slid an egg yolk from her mouth to yours; shared sun never broke. But every sun breaks. The video remains, though she has now fled. Ouch, ouch. Earlier today I tried writing about the condition of your heart. The hurt. But instead I wrote Your hurt hearts—a mistake I want you to hear. How the hurt is a thing, the heart is a verb. What is love, Baby—your hurt hearts, then hearts over again.  

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