Mel Bosworth
After Alaska
we shifted our faces
into third gear. Stray cats appeared to scale
walls of cement. You said: Give me shelter. I said:
Alabaster, Persimmon, Oxygen.
(Enough?)
You wanted nothing to do
with my cousins. Too much rotten meat
too much bathtub. So, an airplane instead.
Maybe Mexico. A reason to watch bad television.
A reason to skin swim.
On your head, green hunks of seaweed.
(I still think you’re gorgeous.) Churning
in salt water suds like fucking bravo (!).
Your shoulders aligned perfectly with your chin
pinking just above the surface. A body
that looks good in pretty much anything.
Tarps, for example. Or tanks. That time
you blasted your way through Ibiza. When you ran
out of shells you barreled. Boys in rags raced
alongside, dotted your gears with field mustard.
On jagged rooftops, boys in drag scratched
and waited for cosmetic surgeons, plain
cowboys, the next great American gymnast.
We used all of our hands to pull the black anchor
onto our naked thighs, and now
for the life of me I can’t remember
what you sounded like in my fever
dream, only that you had more teeth
than the ocean has bad currents.
Mel Bosworth is the author of the novel FREIGHT and the poetry chapbook EVERY LAUNDROMAT IN THE WORLD.
Visit his website at melbosworth.com
Return to July 2013 Edition
we shifted our faces
into third gear. Stray cats appeared to scale
walls of cement. You said: Give me shelter. I said:
Alabaster, Persimmon, Oxygen.
(Enough?)
You wanted nothing to do
with my cousins. Too much rotten meat
too much bathtub. So, an airplane instead.
Maybe Mexico. A reason to watch bad television.
A reason to skin swim.
On your head, green hunks of seaweed.
(I still think you’re gorgeous.) Churning
in salt water suds like fucking bravo (!).
Your shoulders aligned perfectly with your chin
pinking just above the surface. A body
that looks good in pretty much anything.
Tarps, for example. Or tanks. That time
you blasted your way through Ibiza. When you ran
out of shells you barreled. Boys in rags raced
alongside, dotted your gears with field mustard.
On jagged rooftops, boys in drag scratched
and waited for cosmetic surgeons, plain
cowboys, the next great American gymnast.
We used all of our hands to pull the black anchor
onto our naked thighs, and now
for the life of me I can’t remember
what you sounded like in my fever
dream, only that you had more teeth
than the ocean has bad currents.
Mel Bosworth is the author of the novel FREIGHT and the poetry chapbook EVERY LAUNDROMAT IN THE WORLD.
Visit his website at melbosworth.com
Return to July 2013 Edition