by Madeleine Mori
I thought its final heat was my own—
that pursuance of myself somewhat like
trying to orient battery, the right alignment,
the riding, hugging of some peak, until the sharp
release, dispersal of electrons. Curtain
of water molded to ribbon, luciferin
massaged from damp wood. The surge
seared my tips so much I chucked its pink
body back to when it came to me, full of symbol
the morning after some reality TV drinking game,
after Emma gave her first hand-job, I woke up topless
in sweatpants, still a virgin, and Kait was told
to get something that could be put inside her.
A VW Beetle vaulted us over the Atascadero grade
in the wake of a tomato-hauling eighteen-wheeler.
Emma smoke-laughed, Diamonds are a girl’s best friend,
passing me the swisher sweet, crudely pinched
with buds of spit and insight, as we pulled into the lot
of Diamond Adult World. Two days later
dressed as Mia Wallace, I met J, dressed as J,
at a Halloween party, began trading him
Pall Malls for Spirits. I left without doing something
I knew we both wanted, instead slipped the slim
pink tube from its sleeve, inserted two AAs.
Within seconds, the autumnal numbness
dissipated. Five years, my life with J.
Five years with it, and now what’s left to show
of my purchase? Now that I’ve seen the wake
of my self-worship, the body boomeranging
through carnal air, the tip curved, like an initial.
MADELEINE MORI is a Japanese-American poet originally from San Francisco. She earned a bachelor's degree in winemaking from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and an MFA from New York University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BOAAT, Cosmonauts Avenue, Neck, Sixth Finch, The Cincinnati Review, and jubilat, among others. She is the Poetry Editor at Pigeon Pages and lives in Brooklyn, where she works as the assistant to Sharon Olds.