MOMENT OF SELF-REFLECTION AS MANIMAL

I’m worried I’m going to lose my adult
teeth it’s irrational but I’m self-haunting
my gums into remembering what it felt
like to be blood caves because I grew up
going to the Bat Caves all the way up Canyon
Drive supposedly a scene from the real
Batman was filmed there supposedly I’d
check behind every boulder for any
combination of a Bat and a Man really
I think I’m just some combination of a man
my favorite part of the word masculine
is the part in the middle where it goes yuh
where the air tension rubber bands between
the tongue and the roof of the mouth
is erotic is what makes me all animal
inside and up and down and all around
as an animal I went pubic → armpit →
happy trail → upper lip → chest
pubes in fifth grade were easy to hide
a few yelps when the velcro on the swim
trunks bit back but at summer camp
I was the only one with animal armpits
so I did arms glued to side then feel shame
ferally alone below the showerhead
boy who is wolf: let the water trickle down
the fur listen to me it’ll be okay
shake the body furiously to dry off
comb thoroughly to prevent matting
pruning the paws is hygienic
and can also be an act of flirtation
come mating season there it is again
my gums are emptying out on me just can’t
help but howl at the moon oh boy it looks
like a bowl of milk oh boy I wonder if
this man I am can do tricks I wonder if he can
sit.

​

YOLO HAPPY TRAIL, STRINGS ATTACHED

I don’t think anyone has turned AIDS
into an acrostic and if I was born in
a different decade I would have been
remembered as a quilt. I remember
you as someone I used to hate. Dad
always told us to kill them with kindness
but I could never get them to drop dead.
Dead is your favorite oak in the garden
we like to call a cemetery. We remember
them as people who used to live.
Here’s a superstition that doesn’t exist:
each time a tombstone offers you a name,
offer one back. As in I’m offering a
bouquet to a patch of dirt. As in a great
white lays butchered on a beach so an
egret prays at its tail, fastidiously.
On dating apps we’re all torsos
and if you refresh the page every
profile becomes a stone on a wall.
Fastidiously, I remove my stone from
the wall to see if the whole thing
crumbles. It doesn’t so I’m left
to my own devices: a hula hoop,
us in the shower at four years old,
the shark in Jaws was an animatronic,
believe me when I tell you I’m ready.
Here’s a superstition that doesn’t exist:
if a bird smashes into a window, cut
a hole in the glass where the collision
took place. As in it knew all along where
it was going. As in others will follow.

Barker Thompson is a poet from Los Angeles, California interested in how poetry can be used as a tool for radical self-exploration. Barker attends Vassar College where he is an American Studies major with focuses in English and Art History.