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.