Women Are Easy To Love (Over The Internet)
& here i am again, slicing the corners
of my mouth, chasing the shame out.
here i am again, exposing my lack of unlearn
for fear, for the hot nights we share—sweet as
a bakery’s frosted walls—just to wake up
strangers & sticky & questioning.
let my hand go! i told you about that shit.
what if i come home and my mother sees
you glimmering, audacious and honest,
on my skin? what if i enter your heart, a
pulsing persimmon-lipped lout & leave
it, a ghost? what of us then, huh?
tell you what! we shall marry & then
all shall answer itself. i will carry you
on my washboard shoulders, swiveling
my cracked face to kiss your honeyed thighs.
you will grip a tuft of summer hair for stability,
and trade the lemons we picked from
the pear trees for the black treacle cacti
the village boys toss between each other when
they would like to say what they dare not.
you will cook. i will support us. we will ride off
into a horizon of possibilities, swapping affection
for eternity. all will be well & far away & safe.
Jack Fumbles The Egg And It Splits Clean Open
you should not dangle things
in front of my face
my poverty does not make me special
i am hungry for shine too
i’ve becomes the boys i’ve mocked
dead & unkempt hair—a couple
curly locks escaping the tedium
of underwhelm
the places the oil touches
mysterious wrists—unseen &
boneless & twitching with fresh
red sandstone. grated & open.
dramatic assertions—greetings &
absurd happinesses. everything
archived in my fingertips. it’s a
pulseless, silent wailing distortion.
a disappointment and a prayer.
it’s terrifying. a nightmare.
You Really Seem To Think I’ll Miss You
and that’s true, kind of.
but never more than
the sound of my own voice.
never more than giving
all the things i love
about myself to a
more deserving husk.
once
i shouted down
an entire battalion of
carnivorous orchids.
they were like you—beautiful
& presumptuous
& arrogant
thinking
that because they
were pretty i would not
blow my indulgent breath until
they were but stem and root.
how do you think that turned out?
didn’t you ask me
why the summer field
was greenless & naked
as we drove by it?
Khalypso is a Sacramento-based activist, actor, and poet. They are fat, black, neurodivergent, queer, and an agender badass. Their work can be found in Francis House, Rigorous Journal, Blood Orange Review, and Shade Journal, as well as a few others. Their chapbook, THE HOTTENTOT LIGHTS THE GAS HERSELF, was a runner up for the 2018 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize. They are the 2019 Sacramento Youth Poet Laureate, a Leo-Virgo cusp, in need of more friends, and you can find them on Twitter at KhalypsoThePoet. If you’d like to support their work and efforts in activism and poetry, you can Paypal them here.
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