Sonnet for Boys and Girls

Botticellian beauties lie prostrated

like plump game hens or coconut pastries.

They are sanguine, delicate foods painted

for man’s appetite, their purpose is to please.

 

Boyish appraisal is dear and frightening

but my gaze lingers longer and my pull

is stronger than theirs. 

Boys! Girls with icing

for nipples in paintings are distasteful.

 

These simple creatures are nothing like queens

whose callused palms and strong teeth defy

consumption. Her feet are always tapping

and I like it.

        Softly pluck at her thighs,

pleased we don’t belong to each other

because my masculine gaze is my brother.

 

Sonnet for Sleep

You can’t long for me like I long for you,

with all the quivering trepidation

of desire. Tonight the lines I drew

between us are the color of frustration,

 

a nebulous shame I am scared to voice:

that my troubled mind frightens my lovers.

You must think my restless nights are a choice.

You delight in the power to smother

 

rejoice in what I’ll swallow for relief

from these dark sheets you leave me coiled in.

Pull me from myself, from the mortal grief

of weary longing. Kiss the purpled skin

beneath my eyes, smooth the knots in my spine.

 

I am grateful, hateful for relief from time.

 

sonnet for my Ears Ringing

she talks to her own bow-mouthed reflection

quaking with the feel of it, unashamed 

by the many-eyed form called reception.

Words bred within that bald skull are tamed

by isolation. The interior 

dwelling of her speech is clean and unknown.

Words are oxidized thoughts who swell nearer 

to her teeth, for release when she’s alone.

Internal external meet and disperse–

cleft by the vertical line through her navel.

Language is heard but felt in verse,

once uttered undone; this arc its cradle.

 

Big conversations in wide lonesome rooms

are seldom remembered, from death to womb.