Two poems by Raphael Rae

COMING DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS COVERED IN BLOOD & JOY

I offer you the entire heart / tired heart fried in cast-iron—salt & cayenne encrusting muscle the color of its own cartoonification, lost & hot (a polar bear loosed from the zoo / me w/o my Google Maps app). Post-ultrasound I’m told that I have a fatty liver. Come hours plagued by vivid visions of fat delicate silk between my teeth, wrists & ankles bound to a cliff & bring on the bladed birds, my new hole, doll-ragged, red as yarn for shielding the vulnerable brain / tacking to a wall of evidence in search of connection. I describe to you my self-cannibalization w/ smart lights off, your limbs the lovely chains. In reality I brought fire & got you. To sleep: imagine eating: cupcakes, crab Rangoon. Should’ve thought of sucking your cock, but always that’s close to the front lawn of my flesh- obsessed mind, my open mouth, offered & in you can walk, like into the giant heart @ Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute throbbing like a cock / torch. Dark as a confessional. One day I’ll walk you through piss-smelling pink plaster. Every day the brain-eagles, & also your plaster-pink kiss. I offer you my wiry heart, through which thrums signal & spark. I offer you my fiery— together, flaming. Stoked: to see your face as if meeting the very first sun @ the horizon.

A RELEASE OF PRESSURE

I love the green love between perverts, shucking bodies & sweetness nude of viscous shame, learned easy & rough, tough nails plunging into our open wounds & wants. Endless crusade: the belief in any kind of sex as Default Desire is poison. We all crave particular strokes / strikes / stakes hammered into wet Summer earth / through a bloodless heart. Explosion of dust: one species of orgasm. Dark damp sucking: another. & another is being the stake, the argument’s central Sun, want’s sloppy basting, thread pink & loose as my tongue on your cock, as stripes on my ass, as the mucous membranes cradling wakeful eyes. I see you. We are seeing one another’s insides full of fetish object, rejection of / by the Holy Grail, which tastes of vanilla extract & sweat & pursing your lips around the squirming of a crying- out-for, alien territory

Raphael Rae (He/they)
Raphael Rae is a gay‭, ‬trans‭, ‬and mad poet‭, ‬essayist‭, ‬painter‭, ‬crosswords professional‭, ‬and MFA candidate at The New School‭. ‬Originally from Philadelphia‭, ‬he is now based in Brooklyn‭, ‬and can be found‭ ‬sporadically online‭ ‬@raephaelra‭ ‬on Twitter and at‭ ‬notjudydoll.substack.com‭.‬