by Dylan McNulty-Holmes
After m. mick powell
This thing I throbbed to be given
Plucked guitar like fat raindrops
tributaried in sweat across hip bone, mouths
gasp for more salt, want stone fruit, cut
in half, the place where my tongue grazes
the seed coming back slick, all the touches we can swallow
when the wetness takes hold — wetness no longer a stand-in
but a thing felt on fingertips, new shaft throbs, rubbing
itself against a thigh, a beckoning—
This dread, silvered in frost
The plunge a quick ransom of breath when we submerge
the coldest lashings of the lake lapping against the ice we shatter
with our hands, chapped fingers breaking off pieces of
the sky, fog, trees— these shards we hold, watch them
grow smaller with our heat—
What I clasped as the light gave out
The sun’s a losing game, we will not play
the lover, these lovers, the sprawl of myself on their sheets,
frostbitten grass unnamed, renamed underneath
the almost-budding trees, antlering my reflection— do not know
if I just want to, or really can see the spit-white tips
where new growth aches
In this mouth where I wintered my hunger, a smaller infinity,
You swallow the melted sky, flood up to my wrists,
My body, your body, brought to purpose,
Each loud animal a season, returning.
Dylan McNulty-Holmes (he/they) is a writer, editor, and the author of the poetry chapbook Survivalism for Hedonists (Querencia Press, 2023). His writing has been nominated for a Pushcart prize, shortlisted for the 2022 New Media Writing Prize, and featured by Split Lip, Diagram (forthcoming), Pilot Press, Redivider and The New Welsh Review. He lives in Berlin.
Emerge Literary Journal 