Frustrations from Dating a Sheltered, Religious Boy

By Amanda Tan

I want to climb on top of your ear and sniff
your bottled secrets, whiff pheromone
dipped in rock sugar, hard hungry
palms heated, ready to tear and devour
every crystal melting at head-to-chest glance.

I need to tear down your caution stairway,
collapse floor to glorious pitfall………..space,
rush gravity..faster….slower……elevator rushing again.
Door handles: left…north…down…everywhere,
grab one and climb under trap door.
Knock ferociously and smile politely.

Let me show you naked men kissing men
kissing children, children who smile
for bread for mothers working three jobs,
pouring lemonade at strip clubs,
tasting sweet for a dollar and change.

Let you shake hands with fire-eyed gypsies
or the black sea, part your hair in
no particular way ever again, give blessings
to Amazon riverbeds, use bare claws to tear
gloating eyes from sockets, jump off

buildings and not die, press your veins in traffic,
close your legs and open your morals, take
metaphorical acid in Kool-Aid, look
up at the sky and say ‘thank you’
to trees for scrubbing yesterday off skin.

Give in to foraging foxes, make
love to the hunted, dinner with hunters.
Pause………..and inhale the moment,
and inhale deeper when it feels wrong.