SETH LEEPER / 5 POEMS
does your wife know where your dick’s been
i spent all day not thinking about you, hell, i spent the last two decades actively not thinking about you and here you are in your cunning boldness shaking your dick in my face and sauntering off to kiss your wife with that mouth like you would kiss me through the phone and i would call you daddy like your kids when you tuck them into bed after reading them a story i never kissed you with my mouth but when i did in my own private mindspace you tasted minty fresh like your moniker though your wife says you taste like nicotine stale coffee and ignored abscesses yes we talk but mostly in near misses and brushed shoulders on the street and i wonder if she knows who you really are and where your dick has been
- - -
they say you can’t touch someone through a screen but we both know that’s not true because in your absence you’ve had a stranglehold on my throat these past two decades and i’ve just come up for air in time to swallow you down to the base of your shaft i’ve learned to expand the pockets of breath created from gasps and sighs and cover the bruises on my neck with scarves and when pressed to breathe through my gills your palms have painted blue and make do with asphalt mattresses and unanswered texts
- - -
every time i set out to do something i manage to just miss pulling it off like when i set out to be your lover despite logic and distance and the two decades between us even though you touched me with your three thousand mile long wires and cords you just pricked and prodded your way into me like it was your sacred right to violate a sullied fawn a purity diving deeper into mud in a desperate quest to be clean but once words have been spoken long distance and social contracts shattered there is no returning to doe eyed innocence
- - -
say it again tell me one more time how you fucked him in the bathroom stall just off a busy corridor in port authority blood shit and cum running down his thighs and coating your balls tell me how each thrust brought you closer to me like a wall we could previously pretend wasn’t there but is now as immovable as my hatred and my scorn and my jealousy whose license spans the length of both coasts and is inviolable yet somehow you are capable of casual betrayals [empty disposable cups ready for their final destination] and while you’re at it spare me the indignation of a haughty grown man bristling at his obligation to explain himself to a boy
- - -
i never thought i’d have your gall after listening to story after story that elicited arousal and despair with equanimity and yes he took me in the bushes just off the L stop but that was long after you had already cut the phone lines and started the moulding on your nuclear shelter starring your future wife and kids tell me does she know where your dick’s been or did you wash off the filth of you already is that a stain you can truly blot out
- - -
you described the ritual long before i would perform it with men my age and men my father’s age yes i round up but how do you describe your own methodology because we like to say i caught and ensnared you but weren’t you waiting for me in the din of the chatroom lurking in silicon anonymity like tuxedoed hunters perusing the trapped game in a parlour room weren’t you just waiting to pull out your gun
- - -
because the truth is you did escape and your wife sleeps next to a stranger but has the privilege of tracing the smile lines along your cheek while you sleep and close her eyes to the blissful contentment of ignorant slumber while i remain tethered to your dick and bound in your fists suspended just over the subway tracks swallowing hard in anticipation of the moment when you finally ease your grip
shattered
we are seated around the round glass table so we can always see our feet
when we eat but her mouth is an assault rifle directed at everyone my
young heart holds dear and in his consent through silence my father
allows for the release of bullets that can’t be reclaimed or wiped
from memory and my ears so desperately want to reject the
sound of the shells being fired through the air that this
round glass table is so impervious to but as a child
i am easy prey and her inner child has been
simmering for so long there is no
mitigating the force of the blasts
emitted from the barrel of her
mouth until pop! i am hit
and she stands over me
with one last bullet
aimed straight for
my head that says
go away he’s mine
he’s mine
he’s mine
night terrors from the future
i wake up screaming in an alternate timeline in
which my father is still alive and he’s finally left
her—which is perhaps what saved him—and she’s
here hovering over my adult bed suspended face
down blowing out hot air and disgust coats her
brittle tones when she speaks in stilted agonized
cries and at the center of my fear my heart breaks
for her because i see how she was broken into a
thousand pieces even before she riddled late nights
of court mandated visitations with slamming cupboards
and broken bottles of scotch and screams
wholly divorced from the body so i almost empathize
when she claws at my face commanding go away
he’s mine he’s mine he’s mine
shucked
i hold a star crustacean in my hand
and listen to my father talk about
everything he’s seen beyond neptune
how it’s not just black emptiness but
alive and he places such an emphasis
on the i as a safeguard so i’ll truly
understand him and i pretend not hear
as i gaze at the celestial specimen in my
hand and ponder what it must be like
to be able to shuck one’s self whenever
one has outgrown it because the rest of
us are stuck with just the one which
explains why we so rarely expand
ourselves to fully fill it
float
and just like that we shrink
from the beige sidewalk
squares laid in a careful row
we pull our heads back inside
our shells and listen for the
artillery of wagging tongues
content to be swallowed by the
weight of silence with the hope
our shells will fill with water
so we can float
Seth Leeper is a queer poet. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Broadkill Review, The Summerset Review, White Wall Review, Coastal Shelf, otoliths, decomp journal, SCAB, Gertrude Press, and others. He holds an M.A. in special education from Pace University and B.A. in creative writing and fashion journalism from San Francisco State University. He lives and teaches in Brooklyn, NY. He tweets @sethwleeper.