by Dana Jerman

In the reclaimed achievement

of the dream of my girl life

What I’ve kept will not

be contained.

Heart-trust and honesty are

paired atrophied muscles

helix-twined in me.

I am fate’s lazy love-worn

playlist— same tunes on

shuffled repeat since

fourteen.

Climbing into the new

years on this far side of

The numbering millennia

now feels all

tears-verses-orgasms.

These fresh arguments

for the center-sexual:

Specific, Pacific to Mid-

Atlantic, next coast level

unsimple boy-girl bargains—

I’m blind here

and can’t hesitate.

I inhabit an

enhanced mistress—

dirty with the perfume

of essential oils and

drool-kissed erections.

Turned on by pages

and glances bolted blue.

As arrogant and lonely

as a little black book

Featuring collected

fantasies of fellow

counterphobic exhilarationists’

All adding up to sunsets over

sheets reflected in hazel.

Tell me something

while we fuck in the

rubble of the pedestal’s column.

Please, edit nothing

from the gift of yourself.

Let’s push the cannon out

of the jungle and off a cliff.

Make it lose in us its great

and wild scented noise.