Skin

The way skin is
alchemy to bliss or equation for agony. hexagon kiss and regurgitated antigen-

emotion is miasma to his lips
like a straight line fearfully stitched
closed

with fingers adept and fisherman’s thread,
no less.

My mouth ever opened
like a kewpie cherubim
abdomen still swollen
with the appetite of youth.

I’ve never seen his coastal heather
brighten nor dim,
or heard the gravel in his throat
turn ember into soot.

Somehow, I do know the scent of his chest.

Smoke and sweat and heat and sex-

lapsang souchong
haze in a honeyed cup,
an effigy of the colony
in a conversation cloud of
vex.