Inside of me—
half-human, half collected
fragments of morning walks
along the wintered cathedrals
and brown stones
of Mass Ave.—
you’ve seen my body
so many times
you can recall perfectly
the deep cracks of my
white-bottomed feet,
the air odored as I taste:
gin and earnings of week-
long sweat. My skin,
stiff in your mouth,
inside of you as much
as you are inside of me
working against anonymous
parts, newsprint crackling
within the flint of my slacks
as you raise my legs
to go deeper, and notice
my face blurred
below the neon orange
wool of my cap,
a numb light streaking
over us inside the ATM
where we wrestle
each other as demons
tethered by a thin leash
pulled from the hot
vent toward heaven
and you can’t tell
whether I am human
or not, what sex
inside the heap
of bulged and sealed
plastic, the blunt truth
of my tongue the only
feature articulated
from the knot of my face,
reaching towards you,
the bright worm
of my heart, my stench
wadded and wet, all of me
one held breath,
waiting to pass a needle
through this difficult sleep.
When you wake, part of me
will still be there
tossing in your pores,
filaments mixed
as saliva and blood
into the syllables
of your name,
faceless and shadow-
skinned, my genitals
x-ed out, signed
over the length
of your long
and beautiful life.
Kendra DeColo is the founding poetry editor of Nashville Review and a book editor at Muzzle Magazine. Her poems have appeared in CALYX, Muzzle Magazine, Southern India Review, Vinyl Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of scholarships and residency awards from Vermont Studio for the Arts, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Millay Colony, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She has taught poetry workshops in prisons, middle schools, homeless shelters, and hospitals. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.