I lift the sheets from the machine,
lint layer from the filter with a licked finger,
mute the dryer’s violence with a closed door.
i read your epistle again.
wet, down my leg, inside my jeans.
golden pools of oil meet and merge
in simmering water.
r. came by, watched with s. as i shot
the spare vial of t into my thigh.
ever since then, a throb, deep in the muscle
and untended. i wait for it to make me
different: a wall, a border, a barrier,
a thing you’d want
to unman.

 

 

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MACK GREGG’S poems have appeared or will soon appear in Afternoon Visitor, Poetry Daily, Iterant, and elsewhere. They’re currently a Henry Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, where they are pursuing their MFA in poetry. They live in Charlottesville.

 

The art that appears alongside this poem is by Anna Buckley.