By Skylar Milkus
Etymology I
Between flashbacks I hear echoes of verb bend,
from Old English bendan, confine, fetter,
how he constrained my body to the corner
where cinema wall kissed floor, my knees
to carpet grime. Causative from bindan, to bind,
as his mouth bound me to service every knot
in his build. Proto-Germanic base band–, string,
matches the rough cord he threaded through
each of my limbs and twitched so I would jerk
for his pleasure. Proto-Indo-European root
bhendh–, bow, be submissive, instructs me to dip
my head, sour my tongue on the taste of undersides.
Also the source of Old Norse benda, strive,
strain, like how it took me six tries to
leave him.
Cringefail Content Slop
What am I accomplice to? Seven years ago
(according to upload history) a woman
is naked & hogtied on someone’s bedroom
floor & tonight I witness her delicious torment,
my earbuds in & towel down. I finish silent
& neat, thighs together cunt down ass up
good slut realness. I swipe up & unlock
a banking app with facial topography.
My balance is $3,129. Bills paid, I summon
Amazon.com for microfiber dusting cloths,
disinfecting wipes, Mrs. Meyer’s lemon
verbena spray to finish sweet. I caress
the cash tips stashed under my mattress;
I do not trust what I am funding.
Ninety students are arrested protesting
at my prestigious alma mater. I flagellate myself
for not joining their encampment, despite
the distance. Am I a coward to not risk
my body, despite the snarls in my half-
working limbs? I don’t want the woman
from the floor; I want my new woman
to invite me back to her place yet I fear
implying so. I want her body to feel safe
when I mash my mouth all over it.
A feminist online calls for my trans
neck to be wrung before she blocks me.
To which causes am I attaching my name,
so newly won, still stumbling on spindly
legs like a new-birthed foal, still slimy
with my family’s residue? Am I a coward
to guard it, my unnatural offspring,
so jealously from the night’s breath?
Cento Composed of Ways to Leave
She laments every night she sleeps in a clean
bright place until she turns to a black hole. Each
nightmare begins like a half-remembered song:
Between the two of us, can we keep the salt out
of our eyes? She cannot choke a meal down
sober. I cannot expect any more from a carcass.
When I encounter the shell of a cicada’s old
outsides, I do not ask it to be animate. So too
I molt, sloughing off the Connecticut pavement
and freeing my body from her ghost on the couch
at night. One night I am sober on a first date,
talking about my writing, not staring hyper-alert
in her queen bed. Somebody else would not ask
permission to ———; I think that must be why
she tells me no. Not to stare too directly at
all this breaking. In the Yale Art Museum
we see sixteen fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls
on display. Their authenticity is disputed,
which I do not take as warning. We smoke
spliffs on the Charles River Esplanade as
I wait for her to leave me.
Body Rumors
Desire is a rumor less palpable than god until it dwells deep in the body as my lover does.
My organs are overripe as a pomegranate. She does the tender work of carving me open for crystalline seeds, fat and pornographic and perfect. I pray the abundance of my shape does not turn us chthonic.
Did I know anything of bounty before I knew how her tongue could take and take and take and yet not reduce me by one drop?
My lover strikes me sometimes as ten women – here she is in the library stacks talking too loud about Proust, here she is at the half-empty function begging the DJ to play Phoebe Bridgers,
here in the overpriced café debating the best mocha latte in Northampton, here immobilized by depression on her dorm floor among half-unpacked books,
here applying wine-dark lipstick, here refusing to put me in her poems, here not showering for days, here flying home to Delhi,
here, here, here, here, unzipping me completely.
Nocturnal Aubade
The early-autumn slant of late-afternoon
sun hurts my eyes and I smell petrichor
walking to your apartment after class.
Dusk obstructs our bodies from settling—
or is it the dew in your touch agitating
the sediment that basements my shallow pool
of self? My surface ripples like a puddle
when I detect another shadow-walker.
You too live like a crepuscular
animal, nosing into my lap at daybreak.
Your papier-mâché eyelids disintegrate
at the first tenderness of dawn’s rosy hand.
Until we rest easier, evenings look
like this: Undress me here, then drive me home.
