Sleeping Together for the First Time – Wes Civilz

October 20, 2025

The basic fact about that night was you
And I both didn’t want to do it wrong
And, through our focus on performance, screwed
It up and made it memorably wrong.
We will remember it for quite a while.
Thinking about it often, we’ll remember
A carousel of clumsy GIFs, a pile
Of burning wood too soon reduced to embers—
Too quick, too slow, not there, not now, wait, oops,
Don’t do it like that. Do not do that now
Or it’ll all go wrong, you nincompoop.
Okay, it all went wrong. So wrong. Just—wow.
(A bird squawks gratingly somewhere outside.)
Hold on a sec. Relax, just try. Just try.

***

Peering Through Blinds after 30-Mg Edible

A man becomes his dog. A bird becomes
A leaf. The wind is now the motion of
Those waving leaves, is now the moving thrum
Of leaves around that perching mourning dove.
A girl is jogging with her female shape. 

Her straight and very bouncy hair deforms
And then returns to its initial shape
With each swift step. In sun, the sidewalk warms.
That world is out there … while this other world is in
My head. They both exist, impossibly,
At once, synonymous spheres. Both begin
And end precisely at the strange, blue, doubly
Recording cameras that I call my eyes
Which watch whatever comes my way, surprise.

***

Our Intermutual Hate

I hate me, but you hate me even more
Than I hate me. I hate you too. Our hate
Hits stinging ping-pong balls quick back and forth
Between your eyes and mine, to, fro. Its shape
Is a skewed figure-eight. Its song is sung wrong.
Its vantage is a planetarium
Of black holes only, inky, lightless, sun gone
Dark, stars gone out, and you say, Bury him
Alive … to which I say, But I’m already dead,
And you say, Burn him in the sun … to this
I say, You know the sun’s gone dark. Your head
Becomes two sudden lips coming to kiss
Me, kiss me quick, now you are kissing me
With love. You love me. You love hating me.