American Sonnet for My Past and Future…

Why are you bugging me you stank minuscule husk

Of musk, muster & deliberation crawling over reasons

And possessions I have & have not touched?

Should I fail in my insecticide, I pray for a black boy

Who lifts you to a flame with bedeviled tweezers

Until mercy rises & disappears. You are the size

Of a stuttering drop of liquid — milk, machine oil,

Semen, blood. Yes, you funky stud, you are the jewel

In the knob of an elegant butt plug, snug between

Pleasure & disgust. You are the scent of rot at the heart

Of lovemaking. The meat inside your exoskeleton

Is as tender as Jesus. Neruda wrote of “a nipple

Perfuming the earth.” Yes, you are an odor, an almost

Imperceptible ode to death, a lousy, stinking stinkbug.

Source: Poetry (September 2017)