Schematic.
it is nothing new. ‘slut’ one closed circuit
short of rupture, rapture, derivative of
immolation explicit. i am functionally a keyhole
for everyone else’s desire.
all of my teachers said i was a good girl but now
i am a dyke, which presupposes
the meaninglessness of language, me
the engine that stops & starts. so i commit
to nothing but laziness: sloth a blade i sharpen.
i reciprocate any gentle touch with teeth
less white than some can stand. yes, i have hurt myself
& others before. self-harm is kin to surveillance,
the pleasure of kissing
with eyes. yes, i will
kiss you, yes, i identify.
i evade most forms of
apperception.
& like any kind of door, fold under the hands
of a woman. the pities of sex are what bifurcate
secrecy from silence, a kind of lexical play for kestrels
at the window. i like to watch them trumpet
in riotous formations. remember what was said
about circuits? make of it another childhood game.
electricity also yields a song,
& this is plain enough work, to corral the particles
‘til they leak fire, ‘til it becomes easy—o’d. open unto them
your tongue. see then the shape of a future
oozing, eager to fuck.
Lyrik Courtney is a June Fellow of the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets (2019) and the Adroit Summer Mentorship (2017). They are a recipient of the Janef Newman Preston Prize and the Betty W. Stoffel Award, and have been published in journals such as Liminality, Ninth Letter, The Puritan, and Strange Horizons. You can find them on Twitter at @lyrk_crtny.