Ally Klancnik
Three Poems
I Almost Cried Watching Porn During Quarantine
Tonight kissing replaces bondage and domination
in the search bar at the top of the orange and black
haven for the horny and lonely. I simply cannot watch
ropes suffocate the skin or silicone smother her sound
when all I want to see is you kissing me, stubble
scratching my upper lip. Instead, I struggle to touch
myself as I watch a “real couple” meet in passion
and fall in love while they fuck because I only feel
the ghostly stroke of your hand down to the small
of my back, stopping to rest with fingers slightly
tucked under the hem of worn underwear. The memory
of you struggling to remove my mismatched bra
only to give up after a few tries interrupts staged
imperfections of softcore porn where an amateur
actress gazes into the camera, eyes taunting me:
Don’t you wish you were us? Turning cuddling
into a casual blowjob, punctuated with a giggle fit
after catching a glimpse in the mirror of sex-sloppy
hair and sweat-smeared mascara, you still think
I am beautiful. She’s breathless at the apex
of pleasure and I’m breathless myself as I choke
back tears. Instead of finishing, I close my laptop,
turn off the lights and fall asleep thinking of you.
“Quarantine With Me” by Call Me Karizma
A blurred photo of highway signs found on the internet, you say you are running
to me but that’s impossible because you are 250 miles away.
Brownies made for me and you sit on the stove, don’t worry, I’ll text them to you,
download the dark chocolate, and pretend to peel back the foil.
Frozen pizzas freeze deeper in our apartment, waiting to be coaxed out by our doped
up movie night munchies and cooked in cannabis smoke.
My shower feels empty without you distracting me from washing my hair,
now my only company is a rouge spider wandering over a comb.
The parking lot where we fucked in my car under flickering playground lights sits
empty, an A-frame sign declares that the park is closed.
My anthem for this pandemic bumps through the speaker set plugged into my minivan,
the mirrors vibrate to deep bass behind wistful lyrics.
A phone propped up against my laptop, the facetime still on as we fall asleep next to each other,
unable to feel the warmth of another body through the cold screen,
the absence of a goodnight kiss, a ghost on my lips.
Isolation’s Plush Company
A childhood cow rests cradled
in shaking arms, ever-thinning stuffing
pooling in an over-sized head that flops
side to side, as if searching for a shoulder
to rest on, for someone to lift up its chin
and push back the fur blinding it.
It sits alone, locked in a bedroom
that is crowded with moving boxes waiting
to be packed, slumped over bunched up blanket
sloughing off the side of my twin bed.
As I look into blank button eyes, I feel stuffed
myself, longing for my love’s lost touch now
hours away, kept apart, this sickness
that I feel is not from coronavirus
but from craving his company.
So I lay kisses upon its nose
as if it were him because I am now left
with only his childhood cow clutched
in a tightening grip as he did so long ago,
crying for someone he had yet to meet.
—Submitted on 04/18/2020
Ally Klancnik writes: In my poetry, I often explore sex, love, body image and the complexity of relationships. I am currently working on a book-length manuscript exploring these themes while completing a double BFA in creative writing and studio art at Ripon College.
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