The movie is on mute so you can hear
all the sounds we’ll make. A montage
of train stations and broken cogs, all quiet
until you say how the ragamuffin’s
eyes are beyond beauty.
How young
do you want me? My shirt disappears
and you squeeze me like I need to be sculpted,
like you can wring out as many years
as it takes.
Our first taste in such a bare room,
I try to lift the moment like a painting.
In your calloused hands, I wait to come away
a multifoliate smudge.
If we’re not drawn
as hairless nudes, you’d have a hanging gallery
of TVs, flashes of cherubic pornography,
seizures of flesh and fluid
as viral as your gluttonous hard drive.
The words lover and caress
seem like profanities.
We agree we’ve never been
too interested in consummation, but obsess
over knowing everything naked.
Strip by strip,
the slow reveal of skin constellations, dreaming
of a level-end bonus.
I can’t say there was ever a time
when I kissed a magazine cover
because of a face.
My sexuality never
rolled out like a red carpet.
Circling your navel,
I need someone to tell me
whether romance is a packaged snack
or a delicacy.
Either way, I know
you wouldn’t sell it to me.
Fumbling over you on the couch,
I’m waiting for the truest want.
Always confusing
having desire with being desired,
I wonder if I can only feed
on the hunger I see.
I try to make you believe
my gaping, as you stand tall
and I buckle under your legs,
as if every nerve ending
has come to flower
and you are just waiting
for my full bloom
of fireworks.
How these walls stay.
How you’ve grown.
How I’ve shrunk.
You exit yourself with such force
and I remain doubly present, always
too much ghost and never enough
body.
Joseph Dante lives in Plantation, Florida with his husband and two cats. His work has been featured in Permafrost, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, PANK, Corium, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the 2016 Lascaux Prize for Poetry.