Eli V. Rahm (they/them) is a queer writer from Virginia. Their work is featured or forthcoming in Passages North, Bellingham Review, beestung, Barren, The Academy of American Poets, Portland Review, among others. You can find them tweeting about horror films and strange animals @dinodysphoria
Footprint
Fog dense as spoiled milk—petrified
wood white as bone. The girls are smoking
some kind of meat, their music vibrating
onyx pebbles. No words, just a drumbeat.
You pile sand over my calves and I am 16 again—
B caressing blades of grass across my knees.
Sometimes all you are is a pair of legs
for your lover to place things on.
Nearby, a crow shakes the mist from her feathers. Opens
her beak as if to catch the taste of fish in the air.
Fine Things
To be full of weight. Body hair and meat. Ripping your
grief to knuckles. Softness you can’t kiss out. My beard brushes
yours. I’m scared
of everything but somehow not you. The depth of your
hand buries me. I do not desire you, just your weight, a seedling
seeking to become
a boulder. Broad and tender. I drop to my knees and
embrace you at the waist. Hold me down with your stones. Don’t
you know? How much I want
to be the space between valleys? Cavernous and wide.
Something warm the sun spills into.