bedfellows magazine
  • HOME
  • WINTER 2022 ISSUE
  • SUBMISSIONS
    • Submission Form
  • ABOUT
  • LITTLE BLACK BOOK
    • A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
  • SHOP
XXIV
Picture
EARTHLY DELIGHTS 
 
These days it’s like I can only crave aimlessly, blitzed
from the day’s beginning to end with the phantom
 
taste of release sitting bitter on the back of my 
tongue.
Consider: motion as habit, men as something
 
I can prophesize & undo. Even kind John, who pays
to worship a softer body, presses my head hard
 
into the floor when we fuck for the fifth time. Outside
his window, there’s a balcony garden of cosmos
 
flowers in full bloom (but no dragonflies to match)
& I smell his candles on my skin the rest
 
of the week. There’s a sense of pride in knowing
that I can turn every man into the same ache
 
in the end, & I could say, some things have to be
endured,        you know,       to make the pleasure
 
so sweet, but the truth is that I don’t know how to 
talk
about the flesh without the memory of my lover
 
obsolete staining my neck a faint plum, of cleaning
myself out in the shade of the showerhead because he came
 
inside despite my nervous litanies, & being told
good girl,      good girl,      good girl—so tenderly
 
that I believe I am loved,                        unconditioned. 
THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING
 
& the first thing A said to me was that I kept them
up all night laughing in my sleep as if I wasn’t
really asleep at all, & the sun was pouring out,
the warmest day in months, & the cats had stopped
fighting for once to peer out the window, & we ate
fried dough with pork on the porch, smoked bud,
& they said they wished it was groundhog day
 
so we could waltz in the kitchen again, dig our teeth
into whole nectarines again, & relive over & over
this day of finally waking up to taste the world
like we used to, before we lost the will to live in it,
& while we were still here, folded onto each other
like fresh laundry & smelling of pear trees,
I was already grieving the day as if it were gone.
BACK TO CURRENT BEDFELLOWS
Proudly powered by Weebly
  • HOME
  • WINTER 2022 ISSUE
  • SUBMISSIONS
    • Submission Form
  • ABOUT
  • LITTLE BLACK BOOK
    • A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS
  • SHOP