Jarred Thompson
Handcuffs
ground down history into
masses of meat, all stumps and eyes,
gawking at the back of a police van.
try it on, lover whispers,
clicking away freedom to an immobile channel:
watch, react, yank,
give up touch to be touched, used.
incense of cabbage and sacraments of gnawed tattoos
blesses a man-to-metal union, bars channeling, holding back,
separating what you were from what you are
rapist killer criminal scum deviant
dirty slut: torture is a love demanding to know every cog inside,
ticking away under skin, bogged down by heavy animal loving.
your separation is for y(our) benefit
bent arseholes singing to closed eyes
wishing on wetness that will bring…
…release comes when you’ve forgotten your mother’s rules
Don’t talk to strangers.
Respect your body.
Be gentle.
Be kind.
Bind us—cool-as-sin—to chinks of metal loving; Pavlovian dreams reencountered
Again. Again. Again.
as we break our cum upon each other;
transubstantiated chained communions leaping toward escape.
Jarred Thompson‘s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Typecast Literary Magazine, Type House Literary Magazine, Outcast Magazine, the Esthetic Apostle, Sky Island Journal, Cosmographia Books, Best New African Poets Anthology of 2016, and New Contrast Literary Journal. His chapbook Universes and Paradoxes was shortlisted for the Kingdom in the Wild Poetry Prize. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Typecast Literary Magazine, New Contrast Literary Journal (forthcoming 2018), The Rainy Day Literary Magazine, ImageOutWrite, the Johannesburg Review of Books and Transcending the Flame: The Writivism Mentoring Anthology (Black Letter Media, 2018).
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