You look at, then into. Ask after my ear’s tucked fag. Gaze drags from filter to head. Hidden only like a little kid hides behind their own hands. Curtained by curls and cartilage. I see in its acoustic hollows: give us this day our daily bread, all neon inchoate. You roll cigarettes like you rolled eyes when you were small, and so were people’s ideas about who you ought to be. I would walk out to you over the canal on a feeble tree limb, snapping, just to touch your questions, turn them on their stomachs. When I try to hear you in Vienna, my body rocks to catch your thoughts – feels like you’re inside, or just outside of, taunting me into knots, puddles, fountains of regret. Yank me by the scruff into your mouth. Your teeth, my teacher. School me, school me, make me a lesson. Leave me alone with too much rope. Your tenderness tugs, I tighten. Would you open me like a bill or a grapefruit? This proximal agony is overeager, an overeasy ovary opening for spermatozoa, so I slap its grin till it drools. I never got the chance to watch you walk ahead of me, to check out your ass as you withdrew. Don’t ask me that, don’t ask that of me, don’t do that, okay. Little Texan winds up the toy. Spins the top. Watches ta-tas fall. I think you could fit both breasts inside a throat without choking. How dark do you take your toast? Do you cut the crusts? Jam? Butter? Folded? I wanna hear your knife scrape against its triangulation. If there were an itch at the center of your back, I’d watch you struggle for a bit before I clawed you down. I like the shape your arms take when they are groping. The sudden drop in pressure makes me wonder if you hid under the bedskirt during those big Texas storms that make the tin roofs bay and caw and purr. I wanna watch you tremble while my hands hover 36,000 feet somewhere over the Atlantic. A man I know I’d hate spits into the street; I wish I could catch it with my cunt. Duuuuuude, to reconcile is to cockblock your ascension, which is to say you are post-degradation. We fell the trees, we kill for handhelds, we bluetooth our misery over the tight-lipped blockparty smelling the gossip broil. We wanna explode ourselves while we raw-dog the catlady’s shame. Take me to the blueberry patch like a toddler on a leash, smear me with the ones you pick. I’ll glutton while you prune. You sit at a brick and plywood desk pressed against the sill. From dearest darling Vienna, I feel your tongue glide in the manner of pen to paper, unfussy faucet. Waiting to hear what you’ll say next is better than edging. May I paint your toenails silver while you rub your cock and tell me the name of every American president? I’m ashamed to ask. I want you to fuck your lover in Vienna, record her coming, send it to me, please, would you? I want the music of you, taking. I hear your nod. I am dying. I know you can hear that last one. If you send it to me, I will believe in anything. We gettin’ real chummy now, huh baby? I hope you’ve had it out, heavy against your leg the entire time. Your suddenness is a blight, slow slowlike, opening me is not something you can rush. Bangs fondle your eyes, wear your cap backwards for me while you’re sucking me off, a pickup game. I don’t think I could be tender with you. That’s not what this is. Mister, chewing without closing is the most fun a girl can have these days. Dandyisms proliferate in the corner of your smoking hand like a gun’s kick, like the wad of gum I thought resembled my clit. Labial affectations. A clit is an unsprouted cock. You howl when I say the building is sturdy. You flirt by saying your studio is upstairs. Sure, I’ll rub your crotch. Put the pleather pants on. Condition my hair before you pull on it. Add almond oil. Detangle my rat’s nest. I am no breeder. I can still get it up for you, even when you shovel shit in a pen. I have a chest, my chest leans in. Seated. Unseat me. I was disappointed that your kiss elbowed my underbite; I thought you had reached dew point. No, you are the hose that kicks out water like a brandishing, pummeling. You hoped I’d be less docile. You knock over my ant hill. I do not scatter, I squish. I’ll paint your toenails lapis before you kick me out of bed; say you want me, standing room only. Communal property is an oxymoron. To make me come: Place plum inside void; leave it there rotting. Teething. You, my removal act, I leave my legs at your place again. On purpose. They spread wider like the bridges do to let the ships through over the canal, the locks rising when you talk to my thighs in monosyllables, tick tick tick, scooch scooch it. I think I am cheating. I am cheating. On paper, I am cheating. I wonder what you’d like to put inside me most: a doily, coin, someone else’s disdain for moist (how it’s spelled, how it sounds, how it comes hard in a searching mouth), a ribbon from her hair, glassblown kindling, something whittled, a negligent possibility, alighted. The queer little laugh whips me like milk in a cold glass, the bubbles pupate, I blow back into my nose, snot and spit and udder. Apply vaseline to my teeth, so I can’t close my piehole … Can I iron your button-down? Starch your trousers? Blacken your eye? Shine your crises with elbow grease, enable your self-construction, obliviate. It’s all foreplay. Everything is. The barber shaves you, sweeps you up, gives split ends and some peach fuzz to the highest bidder. You can spin sweaters from dog hair, ya know? When pets die. We’d get off on pissing each other off, my tightassed, tightlipped little Texan. Another Libran husband chafes while using his loofa. Sober up, Daddy? For me? I like this mode of manipulation. Saying Daddy is always bratted. When I switchy-switch, I hit his face. Slap, slap cheeks and jawline till his lymphatic system is milked. Look how cut my Mr. is! Daddy so snatched. Snatch Daddy. I almost fall off the bed with his hand still inside; to save my skull, he curls his fingers like a g’s tail, and I remain his puppet. He kneels. To read corporate smut. He looks archeological. The mic is his pickaxe. He sucks on the cigarette, all spaghetti western. I am his stunt horse. My front legs are rigged to fall with the hero’s explosion. I bit myself as a child to self-flagellate. Will you pull my teeth out one by one, so I can heal? Gummy, you want me pliable. And so I never bite your dick clean off. Slurping is a sign of deep admiration for the work. The depth of flavor achieved demands a sound you can live inside of like a swamp or a minor lake. Umami accolades. Surreptitious lizard. Brain food. I wipe your mouth on my sleeve. I hope you choke. Me out. Later. If my sacral chakra is blocked, I should really eat the color orange.
KD Sims is a poet and a sapphist. She writes erotic verse fresh from the void. Her work is featured in Dream Boy Book Club, Hooligan Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Womanwood, an imprint of Cutt Press, Stone of Madness Press, Rush Zine, an imprint of Dykehouse Press, and elsewhere. Sims’ first book, I Cut My Nails for You, is published by Discount Guillotine. To listen to her audiobook, visit kdsims.com