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.

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