2026

my chest is bare
on the projector
you circle one with your laser pointer,
and the flesh bows where the light touches

i let myself into your hands;
your sterile gloves
across my skin

you pry me with
cold metal
and measure yourself with tape
with my ass towards the door,
and no mirror to gauge

who am i
without your reflection?

a poem about putting your worth in other's hands, especially when it is temporary

tongued-down outside the bar,
i discover that alcohol is not a sin
through taste
i learn his drink of choice
under streetlights,
he brands my thigh with handprints
i plead virtue
in the back of the car
but he whispers my impurities
and oh, do i wane in my objections

the rosary breaks
under pressure
of bodies
sweat into the iron pores of the crucifix
as blood into the white cotton sheets

grocery store boxed wine is our blood
but flesh is nothing but flesh

if this feels like a rip-off of my poem "ode to finger-fucking," it's because by some cosmic coincidence (or maybe manifestation or god, who knows) that exact situation happened to me two months after i wrote it. well not exact, obviously, or i wouldn't have written this one. but damn near pretty fucking close. both set in/around a bar, both had religious undertones, both involved unholy actions with hands.

man-made tunnels cut through my body
the police shove neon orange poles throughout
to see which way the bullets came

they say words i haven't spoken
and speak of actions i'd not done

reboned
resewn
rebirthed
but not retired

i pray for the puppetmaster
to let a glimpse of his hand peak over the curtain
so the audience will know
who's words they are,
shoved backwards up my throat

martyrdom, at least the first few stanzas, are loosely based on the legacy of one Rachel Scott. who you may know as the first victim of the columine massacre. her family, and the larger christian community around her, fictionalized and romanticized her death as a so-called christian martyr by spreading dubious information and just straight-up lying at times. i think a lot about the way her family completely turned her into a tool for proselytizing, and it's something i think about a lot as someone who has dealt with circumstances oddly similar (though not exact) to this situation in regards to my dad's death.

eucharists until 2 am
for the low, low price
of $6.99
—served in a tall glass

"serpent of temptation,
will you buy me one more drink?"

the back of the taxi
are my silken sheets
sweat-stuck skin welds together;
the leather seat to my back,
and a hand on my thigh

the driver,
a witness to divine violation
i drag the divider closed
"oh mary, full of grace,"
i utter with bated breath
"the lord is not with us"

his touch glides across my lips
and down my sternum

an arched back
a broken halo
a curled finger

had the court of trent not considered
how a man feels delving?
could the crescent-shaped divots on my thighs
be acceptable mortification?

i look back on this poem especially fondly. this was a pure expression of desire, as told through my typical religious symbolism, and it's shocking how many similarities i can make between this poem and the experience i had in mid-june. only two months later.