The Mailer Review/Volume 13, 2019/Here, Now

From Project Mailer

« The Mailer ReviewVolume 13 Number 1 • 2019 »

For our own grave and shallow reasons,
we occupy each other for a night. Bathed,
your milky body is in season, this house
you carry, to dance the dance and sleep.

I light candles, play an oldies station.
Odd, almost intimate, our tongues lace,
but the motions are mechanical, a muscular
offering, two snails wrestling on the moon.

Yet, you are here, you are with me, now.
For every inch you open up, I’ll drive
a chariot through, sport rose-colored eyes,
swallow whatever drivel dims your pain.

For it’s truth that’s left me like this,
swapping empathy and sweat with a breeze.
Were Death to come, halving this loneliness,
I’d suit up and leave you with the keys.

Instead, smell sickness in sweet familiars,
taste it in riot of piss and bitterroot.
Across your deepest essence, see me stretch
my muddy cloak, the ultimate pollution.