To My Nipple

i’ve had you described as hardwired
the circuits of pleasure lighting up
like a switch made to hurt
lashed by tip
finger or tongue
except i am the one shocked
not you
not at sensation’s overgrowth
but at my reticence
my withholding
my apprehension
even as i declare i want this
and beseech you for it
so you happily give in waves
knowing the slurry outcome
of a verb and a god misconjugated
but does the encounter begin to stale 
because you know i come to you
begging so often
undignified like the buttons
that cordon you
from the snap of shame
less cold than periodic
history in two acts

Aperture

I was raised to be wary of what I let in,
                for that is how walls do their work,

or have you do it dirty for them
     until they do not even have to be standing

but merely cast shadows from yesteryear:
                 when grandfather’s papers passed

for living because to cross involves the heart
            and hoping not to die before your last

name makes it into the sticky mouths of the
               young who will lose their tongues to

the task of letting more than just the light
              through. Ghosts they never asked for

will come because they recognize
              the traversal, pained and howling as

open bodies cannot help but be
                   even to that which breaks them.

Hidden away are a whip and a vigil:
                           two things you see and feel

when they have trespassed
                                      one too many times.

Saran Wrap

My body radiates pain, is dense with it.
                                   Carmen Maria Machado

i take pain by the scruff and
wrap it whole in saran so
that it will sweat when it meets
the cold of me, ensorcelled by
the cheapness of cling and the
irritant spark of life
wet with itself,
wet with embarrassment
because this is the feeling
of a body full with leftovers,
dense with too much of itself
that it cannot find any room
left in the shelves for preservation
until the whole no longer manages
to keep fresh, so it stales along
with the flesh as it is forgotten
while moldering in plain sight,
but even in decay
it holds its ground:
leaches beyond its containment,
grows beyond its means,
greedy,
tensile thing.