Kenneth Pobo
LAVENDER GLITTER
We have dad bods
that we like best when naked
together. Sometimes I wish
I were Michael Buble. I can’t sing
and I’m not hot. I’m a rope
that gets mistaken for a snake.
I can be a noose or something used
to pull a terrier out of a well.
My husband is like the fourth
question on a geology test.
He’s definitely metamorphic.
Erosion buffs up my sedimentary soul.
At Walgreens while waiting
to pick up pills, we hear
someone say that they can
pray away the gay.
We watch a prayer escape
from his mouth and get tangled up
in fluorescent lights. It dies—
and comes down as lavender glitter.
ON A SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON AFTER RAIN
I’m listening to Petula Clark when,
unexpectedly, you walk stark
naked into the living room,
stand before me, and gently
push my face into your bush.
I’m usually more formal. With sex,
I ask “Shall we adjourn to the boudoir?”
Even now I rarely say cock.
Mom called it my thing. I do
my own thing quite a bit,
but with my face this deep,
you teach me space exploration—
I want to find every single space,
my mouth wetting you down
from thighs to navel.
I miss nothing. Pet starts singing
“Everything in the Garden”—
that’s where I am, a garden
on my tongue, bloom squirts
dripping from my face.
CATEGORIES
You’re a bear, plump and hairy.
I’m more of an otter, less hairy,
maybe a bear wannabe. As a boy
people told me how opposites attract.
We’re not opposites.
We’re a knife sitting beside a spoon
before a plate. We both shine,
get dirty and need to be washed.
I like washing you in the shower,
your hairy back and crack. The back
of your thighs, an unwrapped chocolate
kiss. You know I have a sweet tooth.
The rest of me can be sour.
After a fight you said I looked
like Richard Nixon. That made me
quite sour though I probably did.
Bear and otter, we escape
from any zoo we’re supposed
to be kept in. Cages empty,
we find a woods where cinnamon
ferns are always glad to see us.
Kenneth Pobo has a chapbook forthcoming from Brickhouse Books titled Lavender Fire, Lavender Rose. He can be found on Twitter @KenPobo