Bring Me the Body

you say maybe we shouldn’t have sex and
it’s the most turned on i’ve been in awhile—
how to explain it? lust lotusing? greed curdling
a curious explorer into conqueror? fatness
always causes a catacomb of stares. blackness,
immortal in its mortality. the body is a flowering
casket, a luring prey too petaled to risk
the haul even when the sun asks a simple
living of us. it’s day twenty-six of the quarantine
and if we aren’t fucking, then darling, what
are we doing? how else to slaughter time?
what other way to know i am alive than howling

onto a corpse that is not my own. so what, the
mattress weeps. my breath, dank. my hairs cob a web—
so what, my underarms and thigh wounds ooze.
i haven’t lifted a limb, moved these legs, shaken
this sodden coffin in weeks. ain’t i still worth
the loving, girl? don’t i still get to ride the procession,
baby? tulip-talk me. bring over your lips,
sweeter than the vows wrathed last night. hand me
your ass, let me feed it to my anger, let me glut
the thirst. with all this bleeding, who desires
a carcass anyway? i would stretch you into a cadaver who
sings, a purring apparition. i could wrap up all this

hunger and lay it as a precious gift in the grave
of our bed. all you have to do, my love, is say—

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