Poetry
by Charlie Bondhus
The Reservoir of a Condom
"We were looking for a lonely place to spend a few, short naked moments together. What
alternative did we have?" - Brett Thompson, "Brad III"
You should not give your
justifications
so quickly.
After all,
you may need them someday.
Be assured my understanding is
full as the moon.
It's not that I object
to your descriptions of
irises vagabonding
in the slow light of a bar,
hands stopped in red,
gripping a near empty glass, half-ice now
and hair fixed
like upturned middle fingers.
I found them
quite lovely.
Nor do I judge your dispensing
with the formalities of phone numbers
and the subsequent junket
to the parking lot.
I hope you won't think me
a curmudgeon
when I say love at twenty-one
could not fill
the reservoir of a condom.
First Morning in P-Town
august cold as
absolute gray
a saturday morning
with ashtray
half full,
water glass half
empty on the
night stand, and
me and danny sharing a
double bed;
him clean
shaven, manly, sleeping in boxer
shorts and
oversized t-shirt while I wear
patchy goatee, briefs and bed sheets,
awake and feverish.
three months after coming out, summer spent
dreaming of a man who is
like an earthquake,
loosening the substrata of
ocean-spaced body/soul continents
and crunching them together
with all the violence of rape
and all the tenderness
of a good morning kiss.
since hands are too pushy of a delegate,
it is the naked toes that volunteer,
crossing the covers as a squadron of soldiers,
not fearing the machine
gun fire of spurting breath, nasty words,
threatening an awkward weekend;
for this no-man's land of ravaged mattress
filling the space between bodies-
is physical borderland
between thoughts of friends
and lovers-
with our heads in profile
framed between motor lodge pillows
our tongues meeting
is the cold, hard sweetness
of a merciful weapon.
Articles of Sentiment
You say my last letter
made you angry enough
to chew iron-
slivers of bed frame
mixing with splinters of tooth,
the two ground
by a bare foot
into bedroom carpet.
Believe the radio if
you wish, but
romance, not hate,
is the enemy of love,
and a gift of
two dozen roseless thorns
ought to elicit
a deeper kiss.
true romance
last night saw u at
the club with the same
boy i almost fucked
last year before i met
u but didn't because
i thought he and me could have a
meaningful relationship
because he talked big
about noble things like waiting
for sex and taking stuff
slow and all the other
online cliches though
i counted 20 penises easy
in his bedroom on both
magazine and screen
and when we watched
Arlington Road i admit
i kissed him first but
he was the one who
grabbed my dick in
a rock fist and
tongued the hair
on the back of my neck and
then i found myself thinking
that i got farther
with him in one night
than i did with u period
even though u were
my boyfriend and he was
just a deceptive trick and
next i found myself wondering
how my current boyfriend would
feel if he knew that
i was getting hard just
thinking about taking u
and all ur spiky-haired
tight-jeaned firm-assed
young 'n' gay 'n' proud
conventional claptrap into
the men's room and
cutting your throat with a broken bottle.
Charlie Bondhus is a poet, teacher, critic, and sometimes fiction writer. His work has appeared in various literary magazines including Poetry Motel, Red Owl Magazine, The Quatrain, and Mirage #4: Period[ical]. A featured writer at several venues in Middletown, Connecticut, he has an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and is preparing to move to Amherst with his partner to pursue his Ph.D. in Gothic literature. His first book of poems, How the Boy Might See It, is currently in search of a publisher. He is working on a novel.
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