Touch was absolutelyout of the question. I couldn’t stop sweating. My heart, a butterfly pinnedto a glacier. Empires fell inside my mouth. I touched myself like a pogrom& broke my sex into a history of inconsequential shames. I wept viciouslyinside of my own stomach & had it condemned. From an upside-down bellI drank silence, subsisted on the memory of someone else’s hands. Wolvessang & I did not answer. I forgot their names. Mornings were the worst, thenthere were days & evenings. Streetlights & darkened sycamore & suburbangrief so full it made me foolish. I shattered my fist on the Lord’s jaw. Sorrowsat, licking my wrists & my neck. I slept at its convenience. O, uncelebratedbody. My penis, a lighthouse on the bottom of the ocean, shining shadowsat the undersides of boats. Nobody drowned for so many years. Desperatefor the making of those candy-throated ghosts, I found the rooms betweenthe violence of comets. I threw myself into anything’s path. Even the skybent around me. How lonely to be something that nothing wants to kill. (So I Locked Myself Inside A Star for Twenty Years)
Jeremy Radin
poem, poetry