#derek berry

kiss me
mouthful of muck,
lung-emptied
like a dead cypress.
can you taste the brine of my want?

can two crickets
rubbing thighs
against one another
create music
sharp as night’s end?

i dream the concert
our bodies make.

i wear a wedding dress
woven of queen anne’s lace
& wisteria. i slip a garter
of lichen off my thigh.

i do not recognize, at first,
the effigy of desire:
burnt moss for hair,
putrid
bog breath.

not every incandescence is beacon,
some only a house burning
or body
lit from within.

- Derek Berry, i invite the swamp creature into bed, then set him on fire.

look closer. don’t mistake
tree trunk for Wyoming fencepost,
saint for boy, though in the end,
they died the same—beaten, blued,
bloated & abandoned.
but in this moment, hands bound
over his head, eyes toward heaven,
he’s still alive. shot through
with light. throat exposed
like a shepherd giving
his life over to wolves.

-  Derek Berry, martyrdom of saint sebastian after Guido Reni.

behind the school,
we scrum. we bum rush.
we hum the slur, sing
for brief carnage.
We drum skin red,
become bruisenumb.
we limpwrist
launch the football
above us, spread
arms to catch its descent, then
thrum with violence.
we come
undone.
no rules except
blood glitzing
grass, curbside,
parking lot
gravel sparkling
in sunlight like glitter.
there is no other way
boys may touch,
may hold each other
against the dirt.

- Derek Berry, queer the smear.