kale hensley

Instead of Heart, We Could Say

Dumb-dumb fruit
Nettled whoreknot     
Blood-bucked tortoise
Tethered regretful       
Fist of red wine                   
Thrumshell undone
Poppy-eyed hook
Pepper lungstrung
Threads musing purple
Unseen devildrum
Choir runneth under
Cherry-stone upturned
Tail swallowing snake
The wait that awaits a weight
Oh palm-sized song

Forgive My 9 AM Salivations But,

I must debut my longing and her newest wares—

        fishnet tights baked in glitter and dithering eyelashes

known to make busboys shudder. My longing attends

fight clubs on Tuesdays and Bible study the next day,

        her black eyes are a prize between the thighs

that celebrate prunes, plums, and doubloons. Boredom

births doldrums and this longing, he whines when twining

        ‘round twinks is no longer an option. He

hates kicking his feet back and forth upon hop-diddly-squat

sheets, chews the phone’s mutated pigtail anticipating

        that love letter from somebody—oh please be

the Francophile, the painter, the boy with so many sisters!

My longing weeps: I am tired of the dummy-beloved who shaves

        his head in my dreams and calls it freedom.

Freedom? Oh yes, rich boys get the privilege of who what when

hair but when God slaps you with tits and cunt the question

        of peach fuzz becomes personal/political,

becomes matrimonial. My longing, she is married to combing,

a blissful act mistaken for droning; today she caught

        eleven pears, a bat’s wing, a tortoise whispering baby,

lay out thy collection as a faux pas reliquary. Forgive me,

let me, just, you have made it to the end of the poem,

        and I have yet to make room for the delights of you.

If it is not a bother, we may have to share this tomb.