SCUMBAG
II.
Slowed down by the dailiness of life. I am everything a girl should not be.
Bed creaks and blood. I am torment; fire and flood.
Excerpts from the collage poem, “SCUMBAG”. “SCUMBAG” is separated into short, numbered parts consisting of different textual and thematic forms.
IV.
I dreamt of him, naked, on a rooftop, screaming.
His skin glowing like a moon aflame.
His bare feet crunching around in glass like he were a cow
grazing fields of crystal.
I float to him, one wing clipped.
Kissing his unfurled lips, bass blowing through my brain.
He is down to his bone like I shaved him until he shred.
I pour all my shine into his mouth,
he floods with sweet and reflective syrup,
my hand filling in the hollows of his cheeks,
deeping myself into his teeth,
he becomes a chalice of flesh.
We pleasure and plunder,
dropping boulders on heads.
XIV.
My enemies reveal themselves in the bed,
lovers who know no latex.
I sit with him in a patch of wild rosemary.
My back against his breasts,
picking at the green ground
and shoving herb in my mouth.
He is feeling my stomach inflate
between his cold legs.
Sometimes home is a moment or
the best you can do.
XIX.
The tile of his bathroom floor cozied my feet despite the
winter banging on the windows like a wounded prisoner.
The tubwater was warm.
I sat between his thighs,
head on his am,
his flame over the sweating bar of patchouli and vetiver;
His lungs expand and contract on my back.
I was finding new ways to be naked
around him without tasting or being tasted,
I smelled the fat and felt the fry,
but I could not bear to lick the crumble of his salt off my lip;
I will play with a pelvic fire until
the combustion blows.
He is all devour,
he toils delicious on his tongue
until it has no choice but to slide.
My nest of skin, bone, and water—
I could home myself here for weeks,
no blankets and no mother to feed on,
the ranch is a plane of flesh and swine of hair,
my step off the grid.
We barely speak,
he mumbles too much
and I am only alive for the touch.
I think this is ethereality;
leaping over the barbed wire fence,
razors digging into my thighs and calves
like nails into skin
and planks,
drawing blood from me like I am faucet.
I splash water onto his face
and he blows smoke into my ears.
He is the solid and I, the shadow,
rubbing against the floors and walls
while he licks my waving light.
Saliva and tapwater.
His tongue is tender against mine,
wet arms around my chest while he latches
onto my lips,
drawing milk with
chunks of ash falling into the water like
soldiers of a warplane coating themselves in Atlantic,
he throws his cigarette onto the porcelain grid.