SWALLOWED WHOLE

screaming        is the best way to not be silent                  mouthful             seizure of want
night’s long teeth                             sweetheart      how do i hold the weight of this
final grief          for the worst part of a good while            i have been freighted foolish boy
scrubbing blood from the tired breadth                of his lover’s feet      calloused      crushed
in the morning when because it is morning red light splits itself between haphazard blinds
like the halves of a peach                 sweet lovers      i cannot be dragged out      from
memory                     you cannot be dragged at all faggot breath at dusk              at dawn
sunset      is the light’s way              of leaving us alone         and who     in all their strange
bipedal        form has been known to half a peach        and not to eat it whole  please teach
me how to eat with my mouth closed
and forget           for once          to say grace
listen            to the boy who speaks in cursive
confetti foaming out from his lips            his teeth        tombstone      bullet flag frozen over
the day-bright page again marked in ink as my hands are shaking          as i light
the wrong end of a cigarette misspell my last namecontemplate the concept of contemplation as
somewhere           a boy who looks just like me             looks up the word want       and
reads it as your name
because lovely           i keep waiting                     for even war             to come home
to you
dearest father lay me down et cetera            because everything now      feels like i am
sitting in a room          choke-full of snakes   and humdark   but smelling the scent of roses
and great spirit           what else to call heaven      but a woman or man who moves     with
you
but my love is not available to sign autographs                 but is to answer questions

they will call this love or     anxiety    but i call this    everything in the world is happening
right now           so     something somewhere    must be going wrong   being halved     being
swallowed whole
until we, children, make it go right again

By C.D. LATIN

First published by The Heavy Feather Review

Biography:

Christopher Latin (sometimes stylized as C. D. Latin) is a 21 year old genderqueer, pansexual poet of color and an avid reader from Houston, Texas. They currently attend Huston-Tillotson University in Austin where they major in English. You can find their work published/forthcoming in their university’s literary magazine called 900 Chicon, The Ellis Review, and The Heavy Feather Review. When they are not writing they are busy spending too much money on poetry books and clothes.