Conversation with Slugs and Sarah

Up late watching slug porn, you confess

you had a boyfriend who could spin you

like that, slug grace and slug ballet—we don’t

touch the topic of slime—and those eyes

dangling from tentacle tips must be a

kind of love or lust, sighting farther and

nearer all at once. (But are those eyes?)  

Slug sublimity suggests love’s a drag,

touch that lingers and leaves a wet trail of

memory and... What did we do before

YouTube? Boob tube. Boobs we have none; slugs,

of course, don’t care, can’t tell girl from boy,

(being, you know, hermaphrodites), and only

want flesh to fly. Forget their infamous

languor—here’s litheness in loving, buoyant

miracles of want, one slug spiraling

on the axis of another like a globe

slapped by an insolent hand. Neither old

nor young, we’re familiar with sluggishness,

too tired to explain why nothing makes us

spin like that: a-swirl, a pirouette, a gyre!

It’s either fucking or marriage, I say,

saying more than I mean. Why can’t lust be

love and love be lust? you’re always asking,

even now as the slugs begin their sluggish

withdrawal—each complete in love and lust;

each mother and father to what they’ve made

together; each alone, content, and free.