Sliver

now he’s pushing himself up into. a life into time. a once in a life that is gathering speed — his point to prove — is swiftly becoming a not just once. the knot of you, rescinding. out of you, pouring, the product of a swallowed [i don’t want to anymore], which feels to him like welcoming slick. damn the skin crying its quicksilver at his slither, the rapid breath that can’t believe it’s expected to be unbelieving again. and he’s into a groove that is darkly reminiscent of crossways and rolling stops: [what do you like to do] into [how soon can i come over] into [address] and now, out of sheath out of sheath comes the sound of you scrawling into time, sheath, a myth of how this was an incident like any other, and for you, what’s the truth if not this. knot of you, fraying away from what’s felt. weak moan in the hollow nasal innards of [i want] is both [take me] and [take this away from me] and it is still a moan out of.

by Justin Phillip Reed

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Justin Phillip Reed is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Washington University in St. Louis. His poetry appears in Anti-, Rattle, and Connotation Press, and is forthcoming in Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color. YesYes Books will release his first chapbook, A History of Flamboyance, in 2015. He hails from Florence, South Carolina.