Climax is the Closest Thing to Surrender, fermentation, & daydreaming in Starbucks that my husband is Queer
Britt Bustos
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Climax is the Closest Thing to Surrender
Based on Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous”
come together for we are hungry
and giving of what i wish to not but know I must keep
a secret wedged between my limbs that
drips
drips
drips
down the sides of my face a sour wine that leaves my lips parched and cracked.
I search for you in oil rigs and industrial pipes
chainsaws on kitchen tables and dust
dust that never settles from the rumbling
radiation that seeps unseen through ma’s skin
i reach out my hand to set her free show her new definitions and she bites
my fingernails off their eponychium I muffle
the cries coming from her my our vocal chords
sucking smoke through them and watching as it suffocates
trapping me here with her. You, you help me escape as
you enter a cosmic realm I will never recognize I try to get high so high
on your level in the sky that shadows sun and snuff
drag this fag upon your lips drag my fag against your thigh
stick yourself inside and I can fly I muffle
these melodies coming from the same place
where smoke resides up in your mind
or in her lungs or in her mind or how we grow cancer on leaves
for a quick buck I want to run away from here.
fly yourself up here with me.
stay a while, won’t you?
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fermentation
A masqueraded love is like a peach with no fuzz, she says
only wet when torn into.
Do you want me to show you my secrets?
I want to know how to fulfill what I cannot.
I want to satisfy instead of pretend.
Write the craft that makes
The Man humm for my touch,
she says, the lace succeeding around her breasts.
I wish I could plagiarize your moans.
Repeat them so I could make them my own.
He responds that it’s not the same;
only the One who calls his name can
make him ejaculate.
I can never call your name like hers.
Despite my best efforts,
I’ve only ever satisfied by pretend. Or lace combined with
sweat. that trickles down your acne-covered back.
I taste like strawberries. You like wine.
But not my kind.
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daydreaming in Starbucks that my husband is Queer
impossibly sad the lengths southern folks will go to validate
their identity identifying every experience leaning into lectures
Sunday morning lessons looking for remnants of leniency
acceptance as if spontaneously bursting into flames isn’t in the
top ten biggest fears of Evangelical queers walking in where
Jesus wept being met with pitchforks and fishing nets trying not to
fall for the bait give them an example a box to check they’re reaching
everybody every body teaching rights wrongs never true
acceptance except those choices who to love and when you fck
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Britt Bustos (she/they) is a queer poet, musician, and writer from Bay City, Texas. they are an MFA poetry candidate at Sam Houston State University and work as an Associate Editor for the Texas Review Journal. her works have appeared in Atticus Review and table//FEAST Literary Magazine. find them @brittbustos
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