Watch Your Hellmouth
you can come over and we can put
our hellmouths together. i’ll light
the candle that smells like virgins being
burned alive, becoming virgin smoke, virgin light.
i will brush my hellteeth before you
arrive, because i still want you to think my hellbreath is baby
blue like curiosity, my hellchest warming my
hellthroat, my helltongue glowing in the dark like a maybe.
dinner to amuse our hellbouche, broth floating
with carrot coins, mushrooms chubby like cheeks,
things that tickle the earth. my hellmouth blowing steam
in the direction of your hellmouth, which has burned
a bit on the roof, which makes your hellmouth dance like a tongue.
my hellmouth moving to speak, yours moving to listen.
i’m aware of the windows, the neighbors, the eyes
in the reds of my knuckles. my hand grazes
at my helllips like i am doing calculus, hiding
my hellsmile. i ask you if you need water, seltzer,
anything. i expect the walls to ash and bleed
and feather. i ask you if you are comfortable.
i punch a pillow to make it more pillow-shaped.
my helltongue forgetting the word hearth, and
instead saying, Hellmouth. i say you could jump into mine,
uncorking my helljaw for show. you ask, how many ghosts
live in the hellbeds of your hellbody? i count the fingers
sealing my hellthroat like a blessing. i count
the feet rearranging the sand of my helllungs.
Raso means “shaven” or “bare” or “satin”
after the Pilgrim Tracts Society pamphlet “Normal, Sick, or Sinful? HOMOSEXUALITY”
“be not deceived… [the] effeminate… shall
not inherit the kingdom of god.” – I Corinthians 6:9-11
“Parents, that ought to keep you from letting your boy
wear long hair” – Pastor Kenneth D. Proffitt
O god bless
my dad who held me
down and sheared
my head like a wick
till I could kiss
the sun, my boy
shoulders square
with the sink
watching the drain
fill with hair,
the memory my body
grows, my boy chest
squirming, my boy
wrist limp with catch
in the park and the grass
doodling at my ankles,
my phantom hair
all over the world. I was
never sick, but I acted it.
I was never sick, but
there was a boy named
Sean who would blow
at my ears and
nibble at my neck
like prayer. I let him,
parting my phantom hair
like water. I was
never sick, but I
acted it. In the
nurse’s office, I said
Ms. Joy (which is not
her name) I cannot
open my eyes, which
I believed, I said
my eyes are sewn shut
like ice, which I believed.
I was 8 and in my father’s
clothes, milky with
holes and holes, the light
whispering my skin through the
holes and holes like the world
at night. I was 8,
which is a beautiful number
sideways. I was
in Ms. Joy’s (which is not
her name), she let me lie
down on the counter,
since there was no
bed, she massaged my face,
squeezed into the gum
of my scalp like
an unripe fruit, I felt
rivers from her fingers, or
me spilling from the needles
resurrecting beneath
the phantom hair. Ms. Joy
(which is not her name)
called me Sweetie, called
everyone Sweetie, like calling
me Everyone (which is
not my name). When
I got home, I remember,
or maybe another day,
or maybe only in my story-
memory, but I remember
going home to specifically
not go home, to lay
in the grass somewhere between
the sky and my apartment
like a window, and in
the grass, I felt my body
everywhere, my phantom
hair like a creature breathing
alongside another creature,
and another, and another
TYLER RASO (they/them) is a poet, essayist and teacher. Their work is featured or forthcoming in POETRY, Black Warrior Review, DIAGRAM, Salt Hill Journal, The Journal and elsewhere. They are the author of the chapbook In my dreams/I love like an idea, winner of the 2022 Frontier Digital Chapbook Contest. They currently write, teach, and study in Bloomington, IN, tweeting @spaghettiutopia and websiting at tylerraso.com.
EMILY RANKIN was born in Riverside, California and attended university in Texas, where she received a BFA in 2011. Her body of work deals with the tangles of human emotion and understanding, the intuitive messages of dreaming and subconscious exploration. Her work has appeared in such publications as Gasher, Raw Art Review, Meat for Tea, Landlocked and Rattle. She’s based in New Mexico. Find her work at errankinart.com.