Swallow / Swallowed / Swallowing & Masturbating to Greek Myths
Swallow / Swallowed / Swallowing
swal·low | noun
1. a small oscine bird with a short bill, long pointed wings, & a deeply forked tail,
which feeds on insects caught on the wing.
swal·low | verb
1. to take or receive through the mouth & esophagus into the stomach.
2. to accept without question, protest, or resentment.
3. to utter (as words) indistinctly.
example: i swallow my fear & it perches on the edge of this
city’s hungriest bridge / devours the sound of sunset &
disappears by morning.
example: we swallow each other’s names / supplication
quiet
prayers &
choke / on fistfuls of feathers
example: i kneel & bury him in the soft, wet
dirt/y of my mouth
like the mud plucks &
swallows our animal / bodies
how they tell us we choose this
burial / how a grave & i share
the same unclean throat.
example: the officer’s hand perches
on his gun / hands
up! [faggot] / & we must swallow
our razorslick tongues / or else
be swallowed or received
by the dirt or a jail cell
& by this i mean: we break / bird wings
off in the back of our throat
re-teach words / not to fly
before a nightstick or bullet re-teaches
our bodies / animal & sunset / flood
of red feathers pressed into the dirt
how the horizon opens
like wings [or a mouth] to swallow us
like a lover might.
Masturbating to Greek Myths
i am searching for porn with bodies like mine
that are not made fetish / this word for image
to pray over / word defined by deviation
from a norm / my body made false idol
+ so i am masturbating to Greek myths + how they remind me
of my chimera body + how almost every monster was just
the best parts of other animals sewn together / how i am
stitching together the best parts of woman + what i was born with
i lay back against the sheets + charybdis
both this body’s hungry mouths / let my fingers
feel what wet wreckage / what good + greedy
breaking / these can make of any body
name this sometimes-unwanted part of me—hydra
how you sever the head of a snake / + it grows again
+ it grows again + it grows again
like this blood-hardened body / reminds me of its presence
+ in this myth / woman is born from the severance of man
my hands slur semen + sea-foam / into one word / a sound
like i am born + drowning / in myself + these sheets
body breaking the surface / mouth gasping for air
