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      March 12, 2018ImmaculateChristopher Soden

      How long ago was it, that I saw
      Tom get married? More than
      thirty years? I did not then
      self-identify as gay, though understood
      I could not express contempt
      for the bride in the same way
      as the others. Tom really loved me
       
      but somehow the ferocity in my gut,
      the dark turn my blood took,
      was different. Chaotic harmony
      to our conversation, grace in our brimming
      banter. I would dream of Tom coming
      to me in the tub, swathing my wrists
      and feet in yards of snowy bandages.
       
      His sister Michelle wore a lethal red
      dress (scalding the air like poppies)
      to the reception. Female stream
      auguring flagrant, blinding intimacy.
      Even I the pathetic queerboy, who’d
      yet to nurse another cock, could tell
       
      how exquisite she was, far beyond
      my grasp or caress of any man.
      You can tear away every tatter
      until there is nothing but your raw,
      ridiculous flesh, you can scour
      your conscience till she knows
       
      every shameful crime that blackens
      you like ash. You can murmur prayers
      at her miraculous crux, worship
      her nipples so delicately the chills
      will bring her closer to the grave.
       
      We reach and we reach, aching
      to swim in that lunar placenta,
      drench our gorilla hide in milky
      song of undiluted mercy. She will never
       
      tell you that uncomplicated smile is
      stifling disappointment. That we are
      grubby, thick-headed altar boys, sloshing
      sloppy fluids at the communion
      of the most high.

      from #58 - Winter 2017

      Christopher Soden

      “I remember the first time I heard Sylvia Plath’s ‘Lady Lazarus’ in a writer’s workshop I was taking. Our teacher, Jack, read it aloud, and I was unacquainted with Plath and her poetry. Didn’t even know she was dead. As anyone who knows the poem can tell you, it gathers steam and just continues to escalate by way of rage and audacity. Plath just keeps pushing and pushing until you think she couldn’t possibly go any further, and yet she does. By the time Jack finished with those three lines, ‘Herr God, Herr Lucifer, Beware. Beware. / Out of the ash I rise with my red hair, / and I eat men, like air,’ I could feel deep shudders traveling up my back. My scalp was ablaze. Until that moment I didn’t even know such poetry was possible. That was when I knew I wanted to be a poet.”

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