ATLAS
We do threesomes sometimes, on a porch in Savannah at the Somewhere Over the Rainbow Bed & Breakfast. On a latex mattress in a steamroom of West 42nd, Sometimes it hurts. Arch your back. A straight one in Seattle, Honey we need a boys day. Down on the piers the smack of mackerel on ice as on my neck the smack of lips. Did I make you bleed? I’m South Carolined, cracked though the window of a college slum in Clemson, I want to get to know you while I’m inside you. Word problems: if a train travels north at 65 miles per hour, he will be on the other end with an empty apartment for a span of 23 hours. I’m in a New York state of mind as he rides my cock and begs, Tell me about your therapist. I’m a Woody Allen film in Jewish Brooklyn. No, a sublet in Chelsea. Did I take you to see that film? I’m a film student in Prague. Ahoj, HIV negative? My lady wife do not mind. I am smoked and choked above the Charles River. I’m fondled on Facebook, Come to Albuquerque! I’ll oil your slick and we can order takeout. He’s colonizing my District of Columbia. Don’t be afraid to fall in love with me. I’m on a train again and telegrammed. Just out of an eight-year relationship. Stop. We’re getting back. Stop. I’m just not ready. Stop. The train to San Joaquin runs steady. I should have told you. Stop.
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D. GILSON is the author of Crush (Punctum Books, 2014), with Will Stockton; Brit Lit (Sibling Rivalry, 2013); and Catch & Release (2012), winner of the Robin Becker Prize from Seven Kitchens Press. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry, The Indiana Review, and The Rumpus. Find him at dgilson.com.
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Read more by D. Gilson:
Two more poems in B O D Y
Poem in Juked
Two poems in Lambda Literary
Poem in PANK