I want for Elliot a fullness.
Well we can go
in the queer bars,
dumb with sweat,
& our grime is sugary
we can pack bodies
in the dark
What a glory
we are
indistinguishable
Death is dim & blurry
I live,
I live,
I live,
& your beauty
& up and down my back
well we can go
to St. Louisa’s
in the back where people disperse,
& we fuck.
Worship
& our grime is urgent.
The world after all,
& what have we got left.
You say, “well, to quench.”
Your hand is warm.
Your breath is wrapping around
my chin,
You say, “oh, I am,
I am.”
you are wrapped to the floor
I am out of breath
My lips stand out
dry and cracked
I want.
oh, it is well
Things have happened here.
wet swimsuits hung out to dry
tables rolled over and strung with lights
a fort in the third bedroom
bad movies
laughter & a couch
a house.
Why do we measure time?
Let’s measure touch.
Let us
measure time
in terms of bread and shoes,
and fish
in relative extent of ocean
blue; let us not explain
ourselves & what we have studied
& not made money from;
let us not remember
every useless tick of time;
let us
not invent new trouble
unless it’s fun & maybe
remarkable
I am
so happy; I am the first
or the last to break; I am full
I am branded with a scripture
I am burnt with everlasting fire
I cannot take the early parts
of life without medicine
I am drawn from his mouth
as a stone
I am not a god, not a gentle voice
& nor is god
I am the first or the last to renounce
every broken word;
I have gone forward,
I have gone backward,
I have gone onward from
silence to silence; I have
hung wet swimsuits
and violets
Take me home
where laundry
thrashes
in beached wind:
Where the swallow
hides her treed kitchen:
The cicada rubs
to every heat-drenched night:
The wind says, “Blessed
are the ones I leave to die.”
So having slept,
raise me again,
again;
give me more violets,
out of sleep, new violets,
rise them sticky sweet,
as rimming,
wild honeysuckle;
give me more words;
out of sleep and sleep,
the fringe of love is lined with fire
wild,
& wild,
& wild,
& wild,
weeded words
& the hung, wet swimsuit of a child.
Failed to catch the thing.
If it’s gone past a lover,
every fluffed-up cloud,
stars, the moon,
Jupiter’s blue,
& hasn’t found God,
what does longing attach to?
We chew through black coffee.
I am plump and bloated. You call me bloody
adjusting my panties. A moth opens
and shuts its wings like an injured fan.
We brew coffee & dress buttered toast. The moths
& their bellies full
of cotton.
In the morning we brew coffee.
In the morning, a whine from the husky.
In the morning what does a mouth
Take me home.
The wildness of love ebbs like a wave.
The absence of God only increases wildness.
You say, “So the Lord has grown our longing.”
You lie in our bed in a wig. You smell
not so much of sex, as toothpaste.
So the Lord; grow me long.
You say, “For God to cast out darkness,
put your longing inside me.”
Awanmoon held out her fishing net
& failed to catch the thing.
A comet burned a hole through her net.
Tell me your long places.
Your fingers curl to your coffee.
I reach for your face and forget why.
I long &
grow taller.
Wane: to grow
small.
We say we are standing.
Really we are swaying like insects.
Or someone on the sea.
The moths are chewing.
Waning: less and less light.
Fuck me on this day
with clouds.
Jesse Della Riley is a genderfluid poet from Georgia and is currently completing an MFA at the University of Massachusetts under Ocean Vuong, Peter Gizzi, and Dara Wier. Their poetry explores unfriendly deities they don’t believe in and friendly people they do. They are an editor for jubilat Literary Magazine and will be the Assistant Editor starting in Fall 2018.
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