Prayer

Pussy as flower. Pussy as leaky vessel, 
rancid well. Pussy as box to snatch

or nectar to claw out. Pussy as lack
or lingering wound. Pussy as study

or standardized test. Pussy if you do
or if you don’t. Pussy as main attraction.

Pussy as roadside freakshow. Pussy
as wimp or simp or drive-thru lane.

Pussy as danish wrapped in wax paper,
stuffed in bag. Pussy as body bowled over,

folded like a sheet. Pussy as meat for
the slaughter. Pussy as laughter, grace,

friend. Pussy as world
without end, amen.

Touch-Starved

July 2020

Here I am:
Hand in my pants on the hottest night
of the year, in an apartment with no central
air. This is how it goes. I feel hotter when
it’s hot out, & summer with her long days
burns me like a pig on the spit. We
don’t teach women how to touch 
themselves, only others. Birds 
have been using my fire escape 
to fuck lately. Every time I look out 
the window in daylight, there they are, 
in the throes. I think they’re mating wrens, 
but I can’t be bothered to look it up. 
I am busy with the puzzle of my body, 
the shape curled into a question mark. 
The wrens are crowding me, loud in their 
heat, each trill a demand: “Look!” I want 
to tremble myself to pieces smaller
than dust. But if they’re not fucking
they’re trilling—not trilling then fucking.
& the only cool spot in this place is by
the window. My fingers won't soften
enough to coax it, pluck it out of its web,
to draw that warm bloom.