from Ornithoncology
I ain’t no holla back girl, but girl, I love the hollow of your back, a birthmark continent and placid sea. I mean, this shit is bananas. I mean, I once won a spelling bee. But I like best when you sting my mouth with kisses, and I want to holla like a sixth grader who already knew how to spell the word lips, but just learned what they are for.
F*** is not a word. One should not spell with random glyphs from the top of the keyboard unless one’s name is Q*bert or Ke$ha, and it is not. The red-winged blackbird on its cattail calls and calls like a video game. My name sounds like a porn star’s, which made high school awesome. Your name means science of breathing, lord of the sea’s blood, heart heart heart heart. Fuck the haters. Fuck the pharma bros. Fuck everything but our bodies’ thrumming, groping towards each other in night’s nameless song.
You have never been to Japan, yet your hands still fold like origami cranes. We should whoop and holler. We should dance in Hell and stomp all the demons’ toes. At night, in the ringed garden of our bathtub, you fold your legs and everything between them. Sure, it might seem like I’m shaving. But I’m just craning my neck to get a better look.
B.J. Best is the author of three books and five chapbooks of poetry, most recently Everything about Breathing (Bent Paddles Press, 2019). He lives in Wisconsin.