Three by Mark Magoon

I bite the distance between me & you. I try to the moon. You like it rough so Lay me I say. Fuck us both to the third person. Turn our names out & lay us both afterwards to dry. To cure. Afterwards we are other—we are good humans, skins, fine old leather. Worked. You breathe out deep heaps of smoke. You exhale & say We are playing at making something temporarily permanent. I think We must, but I breathily tremble out Defang. Life is a process insane. I wouldn’t mind if you pulled out all my teeth. Count my treasures black, yellow, baby, silver & gold. I’m already prone, so order it all out, on their backs too. It’s less dangerous that way. Let us rattle this bed as we find out—beat together near the base from up, under, with feet, with both fists as we move downwards in rhythmic unison. After “again” you leave me for a moment, get up, turn the moon off. You can beat me in this dark one of us whispers. Consent. So we count now as there’s no cause—just feel. There’s a number in our hands. How much is shared really? Sicty-two teeths-woth. Oh molar! Oh incisors! So short! Oh the mid-90’s black-magic mysticism between the two of us! Let us go through the space of shared mouth open & together! Turn your head, take this new stage with me. More body then moving onward. You say Heave your chest out. I say I’m full. We travel inward in spite of or mabye because of because these moments are so short anyway. So let’s make this next fucking act unfucking forgettable.

Mark Magoon is a poet, writer, and teacher of writing. He is the author of The Upper Peninsula Misses You (ELJ Publications, 2015) and his work–which can be found in Burrow Press Review, DIAGRAM, Midwestern Gothic, The Nervous Breakdown, Squawk Back and many other venues–has been nominated for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize. Magoon teaches writing at the City Colleges, reviews poetry for the Chicago Review of Books, and makes home in the Windy City with his wife and their bulldog. Follow him on Twitter @MarkPMagoon and on his website www.markmagoon.com.