By Christopher Hennessy
The prick
As phlebotomist is
to iv drug user,
as tourniquet is to wet rush
of mouth to wound, flush
of blood to the tongue,
as orange is to wrong,
as swoon is to test,
or crown is to bust.
Onto the slide
Petal of blood, wafer of glass.
Gang of nerves swans from head
to gut, to extrude vomit, not blood.
How to look you in the face?
Blood print, emblem of O
or AB or A or B
or….O!
Atilt with mothers
Alit with fathers
Before the fall
Pearl of blood, brittle birth
of stomach acid, burble of froth.
Fall
Gone is to stun
as declension
is to ampersand
Diminish on slow,
flick the halo
to horizontal,
each vertebra
a tooth, each tooth
a gummed key.
The note home
Bert fell in class today.
He seems unable to participate.
We suggest you explain young men
don’t faint at the sight of blood.
His classmates left papier-mâché
gravestones on his desk. Please explain
to Bert what it means when a young man
is so sensitive. We cannot ensure
students like Bert fit in,
belong,
get along.
He may have hit his head.
He may have cut his lip.
We sent him home with this note,
a paper hat he will wear as long as he lives.
Christopher Hennessy is the author of Love-In-Idleness, from Brooklyn Arts Press, a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award. His book Our Deep Gossip: Conversations with Gay Writers on Poetry and Desire is forthcoming from University of Wisconsin Press. He is also the author of Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets (University of Michigan Press). He earned an MFA from Emerson College and currently is a PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He was included in Ploughshares‘ special “Emerging Writers” edition, and his poetry, interviews, and book reviews have appeared in American Poetry Review, Verse, Cimarron Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Bloomsbury Review, Court Green, OCHO, Crab Orchard Review, Natural Bridge, Wisconsin Review, Brooklyn Review, Memorious, and elsewhere. Hennessy is a longtime associate editor for The Gay & Lesbian Review-Worldwide.
Issue 1 | Fall 2013
The Traiguén Epidemic
Seven Strategies for Survival (in a small town)
Excerpt from The Weapon in Man
The Devouring Economy of Nature
Here the neighbor screams for Frankie
I’m waiting for you like waiting
Dear No. 2 Pencil, Decomposing in Whiskey
Excerpt from a Novel-in-Progress: La NENA in the TL
Eighth Grade Science: Darwin Et Cetera
The Apple