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swang

at night i sleep next to you, your skin balmy course. like grinded down sweetgum made smooth in the sweat of the mississippi delta summer. you tear and bend at my will. your spine disjoints itself, hangs on antebellum horse glue. smells like a black bear’s wet waxy fur, reeking in the forest. my arms lie over you, my legs span over you. my hands memorize every inch of your antiquated materiality. teach me the epistemology of you. my hands in the muddy earth, mini plows plowing up the fertileness of you. grisly morsels of marrow & bones. your fleshy bits clog my nails. grow boll weevils under my rural skin.


holler

down south we sweat when we cum. we got humidity orgasms. those sticky-moist-corporeal screams. that fucking heat exhaustion. we lie in mosquito nests & watch our skin swell. it goes plump-whoa. longing deep like claws dug in soft-red earth. that dirty-dirty animal thing. bless my heart. you make my body flood like a levee. like a human-made disaster. only your hands are made of callouses & not cash. our nature is a cancer. that end of the world kind of sick. pastoral pit in my stomach. my knees & your back: muddy mammoth mammal prints. happy as a dead pig in sunshine. 


becoming

we drag the chili pot duct-taped shut across the rock quarry. the big dog clomp-clomping behind us. tongue like an outstretched fruit roll-up, lap-lapping at his jowls. all our paws hot against aggregate. the siren-edge of the open-pit calling jumpinto my wetness. when we stand still the parasites on our bodies become visible. tiny crawling specks of seed-tick-dust. we strip the clothes heat-stuck to our skin and my gut flips, turns. i smile at you from in-between my legs. brushing away arachnids feels a lot like petting fur. your skin is a softness that moves. 

 

image: Aaron Burch


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