Michael Boccardo

Portrait of a Hookup with God & Poppies

I want to tell you
that he was gentle.

I want
to tell you
he held me     like a wet dream       like

a sweetness supple beneath
the rind.

you like it                     don’t you?

but how could I answer when my mouth
was a bottle    built for a ship?

& his teeth? I want
to tell you they fell soft
as winter.       Laid me

deeper than dusk.
Nipple. Wrist. Hip. My shoulder
opening, a field
where poppies pressed

desperate little thieves.                     I was bloomed, I

was rooted
up, a clutch              plucked, his limbs

the effigy for my cling & climb,
our sweat an ambrosial sap.

tell me           how much         you like it

I want to tell you I didn’t lie

beside him afterward, withered,
my throat a stem,
his fist a vase.

Or behind the thirst

inking his arms                    submission
was my only adornment.

Do you want me

to tell you I said no     said don’t
enough          please?

Should I confess
the lesson to be learned here?
The moral?

Imagine the opposite,
if you must.     Imagine

loneliness never asking
for permission.           My lips
never petaling his chest,

bent toward the star               burning
below the vessel of his ribs.

Let’s stop
here. Let’s stop                      now. I don’t
think you need to know

how this ends,                       or why
desire honed from my tongue

an eager spade. How
it hummed & pulsed & wept.
          His body

yielding, a harvest
I gleaned over & over. Or how,

seconds before the flood, he told me
I would never know
God, unless I learned to swallow.

Michael Boccardo’s poems have appeared in various journals including Kestrel, storySouth, The Inflectionist Review, Screen Door Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, Iron Horse, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Comstock Review, Nimrod, RHINO, and Best New Poets, as well as the anthologies The Power of the Feminine I: Vol II and Poetry Goes to the Movies. He’s been a finalist for The Pushcart Prize and a finalist for the James Wright Poetry Award. He resides in High Point, NC, with two rambunctious tuxedo cats. Additional work can be found at www.michaelboccardo.com

Banner Art:
Moonfeld in der Toscana, photograph, Jürgen Kofler, 2004, Wikimedia Commons

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