Plant Daddy
The crowd of loneliness is pushing their way
through the door of my eye. My skull is full
of ghosts. For something without mass,
they surely are heavy that I walk with my head tilted
and water slowly drips from my ears like the Sahara
winds peppering the city windows with dust
and cloaking the sky saffron. Today is colour
sepia, but my eyes have long been jaundiced
with a numb. The day only became yellower
like smelling piss. The diagnosis was kidney failure
and a widening fault line between my chest.
I split open like the ripest mango in a summer
I forget. The kids are jumping on a muddy river
but they don't care. I care enough not to forget
that I took a polaroid photo and the sky was dirty
blue. The kids have faces I do not recognise
and neither could I recognise their smiles.
Perhaps it was a splinter in my eye from the spine
of the succulent I nursed during lockdown.
I was never taking good care of myself
but I embraced the role of Plant Daddy.
I now have a collection of monsteras, aloe veras
and fortune plants. The orchids by the window
sill appear autonomous. The ghost still lives
inside the house.
Disney Princes
His chest hair could have well been
a diorama of the forest we built
for our school production of Sleeping Beauty.
I curled his longest strand of warped hair
the way a child would encircle with their finger
a bullet-holed wall. What a gorgeous man, I said.
He is asleep. When awake, he is a beast
in bed. His hands shackling my wrists.
He is inside me like a child poking their finger
at the body of Christ. Curious of his resurrection,
Is blood indeed warm? I had thought missionary
was reserved for holy men. But here I am,
a sinner in missionary position. He talks dirty to me
with his heaving. The Big Bad Wolf had a hairy chest
was sexy. I am staring at him the way I stare
long at the wax moon on a Van Gogh night. His face
a distorted ecstasy. His chest hair now ascends
beyond my vantage point like smoke from a chimney.
The whiteness of his skin could well be a snow
storm after he climaxed. I freed a ghost from
its cigarette-stick coffin in aftermath. It is a warzone
after we finished. Our bodies are monuments
of a moment last night. All the heat of him
rising above my head like the Disney version
of Hades crowned with blue fire. The room
is the Underworld. My lover, my undertaker.
I want two Disney princes have their own
BL series. I wonder whether Disney princesses
ever cum in the ever after. I never thought
fucking could be a box full of ACME explosives.
____________________
Miguel Barretto García is a queer poet and spoken word artist of the diaspora. Their poems have been published in Poetry Northwest, RHINO Poetry, harana poetry, Wildness, Magma Poetry, TLDTD, Rattle, among others. Originally from the Philippines, they are currently living between London and Saint Louis, Missouri.
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