I’m wrapped up in your arms, wearing nothing but a thong
Every time we move some part of me ends up in your mouth. 
This time it’s my nipple and you suck on me like you need nothing else. 
I hold you and savour the feeling of being worshipped. 
Your body is a temple, I’ve heard people say. 
And when the heat rises over us, you prostrate yourself before mine
Bend low and drink deep from my holy waters 
Like it gives you vigour purpose life. 
You tell me we don’t need to leave this bed. 
We skip 
classes  calls  meals  showers. 
We follow each other 
to the kitchen 
the toilet 
the mirror
Unable to bear a moment without skin on skin. 
Your eyes linger greedy all over me. 
When I begin to cover up you peel the cloth right off me 
And when you stiffen for the hundredth time 
in these past few days? weeks? months? 
It is my turn to worship. 
I make offering of myself my soul my blood 
And rapt, you accept. 
No other possibility exists. 
You can’t imagine a world in which you would give this up. 

We drain our bodies into peace every waking minute. 
A moment finally comes 
when the peace lingers even after dreams. 
You take up my hand and we know. 
We feel it 
A shaking dread. 
The honeymoon will soon be over. 
In absolute defiance we go out and you finger me in the cab. 
We barely make it through dinner. 
You slide your tongue over the sashimi, 
I squeeze my legs together in an almost painful anticipation. 
We wonder why we ever left the warmth of your bed
How we can ever stand the separateness of the outside. 
We make no conversation. 
There is only baited silence, 
Desperate, longing gazes 
and whispered promises of the ecstatic undoing to come. 

We decide to walk home and the moonlight washes over us in a cold relief. 
Suddenly we feel powerful, 
like it’s us against the world and there’s just no contest. 
When you’ve faced demons alone, one trusted ally is an army. 
We amaze each other in tiny moments, 
simply because we’re paying attention. 
Maybe the end of the beginning won’t be so bad. 
Maybe our luck changed when we met each other. Maybe we’ll make it. 
The long haul. 
You gulp and I shudder. 
It’s too big, so uncertain. 
Can the path of shooting stars align? 
Or are we facing collision? A stellar explosion. 
The stink of fear rises from the river and we quicken our pace. 
Wind whips my hair and pulls your jacket open. 
Why did we ever leave? 
We turned this fantasy thing real. 
Too real. 

I look up at you, scared to see. 
Don’t regret me, I think. 
You look back at me and something surges in your chest. 
Fuck, you think 
And you kiss me. 
You call me beautiful, and the dread lingers between us. 
It circles casually around our fingers   between our hearts 
But it reminds us of what’s here and unspoiled 
And now it’s even more urgent 
To know and feel everything everything everything. 

We race inside before real life can steal any more from us.
We cling to each other and burn
But now there are pauses that hadn’t been there before-
Uneasy flickers.
We swallow them. It makes us sluggish. 
It forces us slow. 
The deliberate motion is new
It entrances us. 
Something else is different. A notion conceived.
Something about a slow burn or a slow fall doesn’t seem half bad anymore.

​

Sunlight on flesh -
the blood knows it’s there –
even the marble statue
thaws a little –
(did her naked toe just move?) –

your kiss -
similar effect –
even the memory,
that shopping aisle 
of enjoined lips –
the rose garden
of fluttering color
and thornless stalks –
or the ascending stairs
where the room at the top
reaches down to pull me up –

one shadow slinks away –
another dissolves –
a departing bird 
leaves its song behind –
the field is free for me
to sing it.

​

No Epilogues

Johnny, decades on & your returning occurs without me seeing you
anywhere save in the heart, the spirit's boomerang
for great love released as energy reverberant in wavelengths
to hands which held, shared in that creation in the first place.
Memory holds all of that as well as imagination keeping track,
pacing our separate quadrants for when words are put down in love,
committed to space on paper with passion
that love supersedes denouements, no matter how messy or clean.

​Closure is no more than a rosebud then, tight in its secret scents,
but still capable of unfurling:  ripe spiral of petals layered
connected right back down to their source.

After I left, in the first months stretching on into years,
their heaviness was often nightmarish 
as if woven of your fragrant flesh, the folds of limbs pinning, 
holding me in, lying on top & I having again & again to explain & convince
we were no longer together, in a threesome with alcoholism,
though I'd still wake as if gasping, fighting off the bed spins
of being uncontrollably drunk.

​Even when news of your death showed up, those accidental beans spilled
by an acquaintance L.P.N. bringing my father his nursing home meds,
the dreams did not stop nor do I ever expect 
your consciousness not to pop in, occasionally coincide with mine
though these visits have become more of ease,
a subliminal shared joke that we both know
how I am on to your tricks.

​You are Connie Francis again, the Connie sensation 
so many knew you as, half mad & hilarious 
with your drag's bit blowsy craft taken so seriously
between the vodka - (it's scentless) - mixed with Gatorade -
(it hydrates) to combat nerves of some PSTD strain
for broken-into hotel rooms & hidden rapists to forever escape.

​They'd become terror desperately, valiantly turned again on its head 
with "Stupid Cupid" lyrics for where the boys were
with someone waiting with no lipstick on his collar
telling tales you'd have to chide with long elbow-length gloves,
a gown of sparkling black taffeta & wig of equal shimmer
tiara-headband held.

​Ah, but how you shaved everywhere for that fantasy,
pulling stockings into hungry love-for-sale heels
& I watched fearing for you, small boy still before his mirror
lip-synching to the boxed turntable, the spell of the vinyl
record whirlpool, while wanting your dreams to become real.

​Johnny, your beautiful medleys spot-light shine
from P. Town dives still, tinsel echoes of Grizabella glamour now
off-stage, & no longer dragging the need to be touched
in a show-stopping torch song for you are Dorothy
& the friends of, barfly by barfly, clicking the ruby slippers
to at last have found yourself an Amazing Grace salvation,
with mercy for the wretched, in some place like home.

Anthony is a mixed-race poet & writer whose work tends to focus on social inequality throughout late-modern society. Anthony travels frequently and has spent most of his life in Kuwait jostling between the UK & America. Anthony's work has been published 140 times. Anthony has 1 published chapbook titled The Great Northern  Journey.  Twitter/Instagram: @anthony64120 https://arsalandywriter.com/  Anthony is the Co-Eic of Fahmidan Journal. 

Swirls shift, 
rotate in sympathy,
lacing threads like weavers,
spinning, both inside,
(and out);
hazy moonshine 
feeds biting bones
satiating in darkened sunshine. 

Rivulets of sadness spill…
synthesising with skin;
misty layers fold
bandaging breath,
suckling nocturnal morsels
as rearing piglets –
snuffling deep in fleshy layers,
proud as truffle towers. 

Clouds of sentience puff,
dispel…

Semblances of consciousness
taint peripheral memories
as grandma’s rhubarb pie -
custard-comfort, sugary-crust soft. 
A maroon edge wavers,
sound-wave happy,
drinking in Sunday afternoons. 

Liquids flow, stroking surfaces
like new lovers:
silly smooth,
clean shaven,
perfume-pungent. 

Desire swallows whole,
chewing tendrils of memories
like an obliterated octopus;
its talons stuck on empty glass
like an absent reflection. 

I fold, enveloping decadence,
inhaling siphoned fumes;
breath in alchemy 
as a held mistress –
heady notes drift, sway
like a tempestuous storm;
misty foam coats my thoughts
in a pretence cleansing

​

Emma Wells is an English teacher and a mother to a six year old daughter. She writes poetry and short stories as she enjoys the creative freedom that it allows. She has been writing creatively for nearly two years. She has poetry printed in The World’s Greatest Anthology, The League of Poets, The Lake, The Beckindale Poetry Journal, Dreich Magazine, Drunken Pen Writing, Visual Verse, Littoral Magazine and as part of the Ledbury Poetry Festival.

Saying “I love you” to someone who can’t hear doesn’t count

It’s there, hidden beneath an olive branch 
Withdrawn, and all too quickly withered 
A lost voice foundered in a remote valley 
Where past transactions echo silently 
Never dormant in the minds of the recipient 
Joyous, a prowling beast of joyous occasion 
But a vacuous space holds for most 
Spoken words displaced 
Laid to rest at the spark of a thought 
Too late to utter, the moment passed

“I love you”, said

In a whisper in the car on the way home 
When you passed 
After the door clicked back into place, 
Your perfume dragged quickly behind

​In anger, sarcastically thrown 
On repeat, repeat, repeat before you answer the phone
During rehearsal in a teenage bedroom, 
A tragic comedy coming too soon

​Me, to you 
The great unknown