Today's poem is by Amorak Huey

At the Bar
       

Just buzzy enough to say without thinking I use my mouth a lot
& I'm talking about writing poems & go-to metaphors
& you are kind enough to laugh before the words
calcify into a problem. Still,
my face goes hot. My poems
are full of mouths & fingers
& fingers in mouths & I do want to be tasted.
I want to set free the shame
that animals hot through my blood
& I want you to unlatch the trap
& suddenly I miss the days
when we all smoked in places like this
to give our mouths something
to do, our fingers — the scratch
& flick & flame of a cheap lighter
illuminating tiny spaces between us,
& we'd go home smelling of the night we'd had
in our clothes & our hair & though
we now claim to prefer the world this way,
odorless & poison-free,
let's be honest, there
was magic in the fires we lit back then,
even the bitterest smoke
a middle finger to our body's weaknesses,
a fuck you to mortality & a thank you to desire
& it's always been our mouths that keep us alive, always.

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Copyright © 2023 Amorak Huey All rights reserved
from Twelve Mile Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission