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Dysmorphic
by Gianni Gaudino

​When I pour espresso in my cup,
the sugar dissolves into something else.
 
To clean the moka, Simon tells me,
don’t use soap. I like the way his collar
 
cups his neck, how his body reminds me
of Jesus’s without abs. When I cry
 
in bathroom mirror, face smeared
with Nutella, that’s all I want.
 
Who’s calling me at this hour? The moonlight
peeking through my venetian is my friend.
 
I want it gone. I want the ocean outside my window
gone. Maybe if I had Simon’s shoes, the way
 
his body fits in a sweater, I could remain,
but a cold breeze’s vibrato calls me.
 
Maybe the crab sleeping on the jetty isn’t lonely.
Perhaps it wants to trade bodies with a pigeon.
 
Perhaps the pigeon wants to be a worm.
The worm, dirt. Dirt, sky. Sky, air. Air, the sun.
 
As Pliny the Younger watched the sun blacken
and ash he, too, felt a sort of urgency to flee,
 
felt delirious despite the crowd. Eventually
the boats beneath Vesuvius did get away,
 
one way or another, and the sky split in two
by light. If only my body were a door.


​Gianni Gaudino is an Adjunct Instructor of English at Atlantic Cape Community College. His poems have appeared in Public Pool and Philadelphia Stories. Though he's procrastinating the application process, he hopes to attend graduate school for an MFA in Poetry in the fall of 2017. He lives in South Jersey.
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​​Fall 2016, Issue 19
ISSN 2157-8079
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