Sin in the Body \\ Surfeiting

Sin in the Body

“Before disease comes sin”

Sin between my teeth
sin hides under my tongue
on my lips. Sin enters
my bloodstream.

Sin is oblong, heart-shaped:
a fig split in two. Tongue
the nectar, the flesh rush
the pain in your head.

Your lungs constrict
you wheeze, take a hit
of your puffer—does God
hide in that contraption?

Are the chemicals His
breath? Where do priests hide
their sins? In the folds
of their religious garb?

In the golden chalice
from which His blood oozes?
Drawing blood is sacred, mingling
His fluids with ours: sacred.

Extract the sin, place
it between the prongs
of a tweezer and pull
until it comes loose.

Where do you place sin
once it’s removed?
In a biohazard box?
How is it destroyed?

You’re not answering.
Maybe I want sin
on my tongue, tasting
her clit, parting the fig’s
flesh, picking the seeds
from my teeth, wiping
the nectar from the crease
that forms my chin. Why
does her hair smell sweet
if it’s dirty? Why is her skin
illuminating if it’s murderous?
Why am I born again every time
She screams my name at the ceiling?

Surfeiting

If music be the food of love play on,
that surfeiting, making me sick.

My love is undercut.
I can’t hold my girlfriend’s hand
without a man inserting himself
I can’t express innocent affection
without being fetishized
in this grotesque, macho cesspool
I am like Nora, perched in the window
in a glass display case in an art gallery
so these men can ogle and gawk
and spit and cough and sputter,
“You’re so sexy.”

So I break the glass and I rip the frames
and my hands wrap around his fucking
neck and I’m creating art with fluid
that resembles red paint 
and it’s funny
because I make art with 
my love.

My lover is art, immortalized
in the Louvre, down the back
(but who cares) and we’re hiding
from greedy eyes that undress,
unravel, 
hidden so we can love
without perception, opinions
His sick fetishes, this isn’t a fetish
this is a livelihood, this isn’t for you
for once something isn’t for you
but you want so you have, you need
so you take, you hunger, you consume

surfeiting.