Age oozes
through gaps in my stitching.
I am marrowy
rotten to you. When you tuck
into my neck,
be repelled by the odor of wet
fruit. Misspell
my name so I know
it’s real. Blink: once
for wetness, twice for blood.
Slide. Butterfly
torn like paper. Who
but a man would think
to rip tissue like paper? Slide.
‘Tissue paper’ is eerie, no?
Think about it, but
you don’t. Slide. Wind
sings through a holey
wing and the whistling
beast won’t fly. Slide.
Blood is only a metaphor
for other blood. Estimate
the platelets on the earth, count
the plasma. You think you can turn
this talk into stars or sand, but blood
is at hand, sir, do not waver. Fuck me
like my blood doesn’t uneasy you. No—
not the obvious blood, but this
in my wrist, that in my tongue. We
were talking of blood, my good man. Prick
me
and watch me flow. Your only task to look
and you can’t. My insides don’t feel
seventeen
years old enough. Let any man
say I am less for thinking of bodies,
writing of skin. Let any man deny these breasts
full of dead fat. These hips, as stark as ribs. Lust
for a dam of torrential blood,
barely. Peel me to anatomy textbook
red and that’s it, I am known. Butterfly jerks
on the slide—you bumped it. No blood but the potent
liquors of science. Begin again. Pronounce
my name your way. What chance
do the rest of them have, when I
am what’s insurmountable?
Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection 'The People's Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling' (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Catapult, Electric Literature, and Autostraddle.