Poems For Your Birthday – Anthony Isaac Bradley

February 5, 2019

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Blue Poem

What is your level of need

when I bubble up to say

softly, give it to me

compared to when I work it hard

like the collar off my back

on your floor is blue?

Baby talk (coo) in one ear

while you, skin pink,

float in a mix

of body condiments:

Old Spice. Raspberry bath bomb.

You could say cock to outline

when you want it. A boy like me

has to work blue to be on your stage,

home of the quickly-bored.

Pornhub told you how

I should speak.

But I find fill my holes

odd to place on my tongue

when I’d rather just breathe

out and take you in.

I have all this clean material

but you’re applying pressure

to my throat. I will ask, harder, Daddy

until we both wake bruised.

Now have every phrase

that reminds you of your mother

though I’m not.

Time for breakfast,

baby, let me cook for you

while you call to task

every teenager killing you online.

Assholes. I love you,

honey. Fuck

my mouth again.
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Swoon

makes me think swan
only I tip
when I swoon
and I can’t see
an upright masterpiece
ever falling over
to one side,
like swimming
with the right arm
but not the left.
I don’t quite fit
as a swoon-elicitor
but I might have
gotten woozy
back in preschool
when a boy hit me
upside the head
with a dislodged
monkey bar plank, blood,
forerunner of grace,
consciously moving
to be seen.
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Out

hairpins nesting in the sidewalk cracks

this isn’t about my mother

there are just so many discarded

left here to be picked up

by a body that needs

another adjustment or fix to feel complete

after leaving home

one skinny hair tucked to the side
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Walk of Shame Down Five Stories

The boy he was with was bigger than him,
but willing to share his green
and Smokey Robinson. In the shower, before a cup
and before he could remove the sleep from his eyes.
Meetings like this his new normal,
not to get over anyone, wipe an Ex, whatever.
He was new here. No one used
to his drawl yet, each unblocked face curious
what he could provide.
Like this boy. Turns out,
not much. Maybe it was the size comparison,
or the smoke, but he couldn’t offer much beyond
arms around the waist, limp between
the cheeks. All he wanted was for his damp back
to let go of original form. Through magick or surgery,
squeezed underneath and between as a natural layer.