a poem for you, from me.

BUTCH CLEAVAGE
By Raquel Gutierrez

There is a young man I miss.
He lived behind my eyes.
Inside my fists.
His name was mine.
My name was his.

He, a hunk of dust ready to explode
over cunnilingus
a prized pelt.
One dead doe and some rabbit meat
Together we could skin anything.

Brutos.
Hooligans.
Thugs.
Hermanitos de leche.

He had a temper and it was my beacon.
And the only way to temper such a storm
was to consume briny flesh,
a raw meat anti-thesis of sugar and spice
‘Twas the adrenaline we hunted and collected together
though sometimes he’d go in on the kill
alone

When I’m sleeping, I feel his boots
he leaves footprints on my back
I use words sparingly
for his name is a prayer written in gunpowder.

You were my protector.
I will love you more than I do.
I will honor you beyond a masculine incantation.

I cannot talk about my body and not bring him up in the conversation.

When we were Together
shoulder to shoulder
in line at the 99cent store
Atlantic and Randolph,
lesser gods bisecting suburban sprawl
my gaze upon the railroad tracks
while He ponders your naked body underneath his.
He provides me comfort in the sex without love imaginary.
He champions me.
I look away.

In this plastic oasis
I’m unsuccessful in my bid for quality candy
hellbent for the hot tamales that will temporarily
scorch the invisibility off my tongue
until it’s time to return for Saint Valentine.

I make the excessive point to make
my talk as small and loud
when it’s my turn to bat eyelashes
with the cash register ringer,
tight eyeliner on her deepset obsidian eyes
looking everywhere else except into my own eyes.
While his eyes
rage and invoke
the most violent of jokes, quotidian juju
to ward off another mundane episode.

He and I are
not forlorn over testicles
On the contrary, that we are borne from brown men that lack
mostly effectiveness
We rise from the ashes of eunuchs and
Fly with phallus wings pieced together with the wax that mourns us as it melts.

He and I are a nucleic acidic force
Split us wide open in this uninterrupted plateau of concrete,
a parking lot composes a version of the world where I’m not dead
and he is yet to be alive.
We meet in the middle, in the sharpest part of the chasm.
This gap exists in my chest, between my breasts
under wifebeating tendencies
and still there is another hollow visible between where it’s rarely seen,
the split
that never ceases to exist
not unlike the slit between my legs.
Is the sideways smirk really there?

The slit and the spit it emits creeps me the fuck out
Only during those instances when I ruefully forget
that this body we share hovers in
perpetual paradigmatic purgatory
of the in-between terrain of living today
and circumnavigating death
all the days after,
the oblique desire
suicide in teeny tiny increments
like vitamin death twenty-four times a day.

Even when my ass clenches, even when his eyes close,
even when all I have is my sense of smell leading me into temptation,
there’s still this cleavage between my eyes, between his legs,
a hollow made visible by your eyes and not your eyes.

If you could learn to see the split in my lip,
the tear my hands do unto his hair,
the gash where my stash ought to be,
the cracking up,
Mad magazine
an aperture between my teeth,
from here is where
I spit out the bad water,
only to have him lap it back up

I’m only giving back what I get and getting what I give.
And he repeats the same pattern in a mirror that neither of us see

When you see me,
You see him
When you see us
what do you see?

Butch hair.
Butch face.
Butch neck.
Butch shoulders.
Butch arms.
Butch hands.
Butch torso.
Butch stomach.
Butch hips.
Butch cunt.
Butch cock.
Butch ass.
Butch thighs.
Butch tongue.
Butch ankles.
Butch feet.

Dickholes in my underwear becomes another sucker’s punchline.

I am honored to carry this burden.

Butch cleavage.
He sprang from the split, not unlike Athena.
He sprang to life with no father,
with a prosthetic dick,
a lightening bolt.
We became each other
Two baby daddies, sucking each other’s thumbs.
Butch cleavage
It is here from where we conspire

You gave me life, papi.