Rapid Cycle
I am electric!
I am a beehive of movement!
I am a fire moving a hundred miles an hour,
my painful mouth lapping up all the dead trees
left behind! I am unfinished in my possible horrors!
I am a darkening alley, a miserable shot of panic
& I am awake under the bed.
I want to cause a childhood fear so badly my teeth ache!
I want to thumb at a nostril & snort up the moon!
In the meantime, I will pulverize the sun & forget to spread the ashes.
Look, look: my eyes are the color of peppermints
& my tongue is as quick as a knife to the guts.
I am relentlessly alive.
I am a should not & I am a cannot.
I am not a fox in the henhouse;
I am a freshly-cleaned scope,
a willful, steady hand—my body is all trigger.
I am electric!
I am a beehive of movement!
I am a fire moving a hundred miles an hour,
my painful mouth lapping up all the dead
trees left behind! I am unfinished in my possible horrors!
I am a darkening alley & a miserable shot of panic
& I am awake under the bed.
I want to cause a childhood fear so badly my teeth ache!
I want to thumb at a nostril & snort up the moon!
In the meantime, I will pulverize the sun & forget to spread the ashes.
Look, look: my eyes are the color of peppermints
& my tongue is as quick as a knife to the guts.
I am relentlessly alive.
I am a should not & I am a cannot.
I am not a fox in the henhouse;
I am a freshly-cleaned scope,
a wilful steady hand—my body is all trigger.
Broke Boi Love Song
So: if a broke boi stands in front of you dripped out in sunlight
& he has a row of good teeth + a worse job
& if you have a heart like an overripe plum
waiting to bruise itself against his pride
& if he stuffs hot fries into a greased-up bag for you
even though he’s reached the crescendo of a closing shift
& if the love keeps them warm on the long walk home
& if he calls the drooping mattress a futon,
presses his own back into the spiraling springs instead of yours
& if you are just now learning what love is:
pinpricks of blood between shoulder blades
& fry oil clinging to your fingertips
& if you have watched his mouth tighten into
an electrical wire at the end of the month
& if the lights were turned off
because you went to the movies last night
& if the lights were turned off
because he could not hold a fight against a resume
& if the two of you laid in the humming dark,
counting out each other’s breaths
& naming them after your children:
…would y’all call that a date?
Levi Cain is a non-binary Queeribbean writer from New England. Their work has appeared in SAND Journal, The Slowdown, Room Magazine, Voicemail Poems, and elsewhere. You can keep up with their work on levicain.wordpress.com, or on Twitter @honestlyliketbh.
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