My skin is tethered to long bolts,
pinned up like teenage posters.
You say that it will never be over
and I swoon like dirty wings.
Spread me out like wings and
push me through the pregnant pause.
Sing and hold my hopes for hostage.
You find hidden places I ache and
breed and move and diddle-daddle
on my naked sweaty knees.
Say to me that my hands are bloodlines
to my death,
and lead me there in tow like thunder.
Make my death the little smeared edges.
When it’s no longer so unfamiliar
you somehow lick the ocean clean.
Take my world and fuck me up again.
Tomorrow I will be sick but I am also
always sick with you and unbelievable.
Push me open and show me who I cannot be,
or else have my eyes fit snug bug into
my heaving openings and closings.
To you I am nothing and it is this nothing
I wrap in and spin wildly outside my head,
up against your blowing horror face.
Show me the horror inside my open body.
~~~
J C Bouchard’s collection of poetry and photographs, Let This be The End of Me, was published by Bad Books Press in spring 2018. Their poetry is forthcoming in CAROUSEL and has appeared in PRISM international, carte blanche, Arc, The Puritan, Hart House Review, BAD NUDES, BafterC, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and more. They live in Toronto and online at jcbouchard.com
