A Poem by Tom Capelonga

Author: Poetry Editor

March 9, 2016

This week, a poem by Tom Capelonga.

 

FWB

 

Forgive me for not writing sooner
I’ve invited loneliness to spend the week

and have kept to myself to iron his shirts
or pin up photos of martyred saints

to join a chorus of upturned gazes divining
deliverance past the frame —

but I’ll spare you a dispatch from
the throes of velvet misery.

For I am, in spite of this, a body
beholden to grindings of ancient machinery

and suddenly recall your
willing presence beneath my hands.

I search furious and fruitless for
an opening to the depths of you,

as pupils dilate and muscles contract
in a race toward panting ambivalence,

and trace my name across your chest
with no intent to retrieve it.

There is an elegance in this
to substitute one’s sustenance

just as a mass in Latin
consecrates his absent flesh.

——

TOM CAPELONGA is a 27-year-old native of New York City. His poems have appeared in FourTwoNine Magazine, Podium, and the HIV Here & Now Project.