in parentheses

Michal Smith masquerades as an adult by day, working as a financial controller, and devotes early mornings, lunch breaks, and evenings to crafting poetry, novels, and short stories. Their poetry appears in literary journals (Black Moon Magazine, The Sheepshead Review), and scattered recklessly across the desks of their dearest friends.

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To Bread

You are a simple lover
I’ve seen the world
refuse your four ingredients
as too mundane
So we two share      the secret
of our endless experimentation
behind closed doors

Flour water yeast
Salt
Always just enough salt
On tongue tip, fingertips
I sink into you
I cannot pull away
Without some part of you
Sticking to me

I dust you with flour
slide one flat palm
then another
across your surface
grab you and fold
fold fold fold
My fingerprints appear
then vanish on your skin
I cover you
wrap you in warmth
The humidity of our love-effort
steams the glass

This is holy work
a mystery    a magic
You rise under my hands
When I move you
guide you towards new shapes
I hear your faintest sighs
listen for you to tell me
what you need, want
from me

It is the heat that makes us—
you in the oven
me sweating at the window
I wait for you
distract myself from longing
until that moment
when I slide you from
rack to counter
insert thermometer
and wait for your release
a perfect 210 degrees
never above the boiling point

We rest together
until you’re ready
I don’t mind the waiting
I set the butter beside you
begin its slow salted softening
So it’s ready for us
ready to make our hungry mouths
our craving fingers
slick-shined in consummation

Sex At Your Parents’

Quiet— Skip the third stair
It creaks
You should have told me that—
Shhh— you want breakfast, right?
I’m trying to be quiet, okay?
I didn’t grow up here
Skip the eighth one too
Lean against the wall
Feet close to the baseboards
When you walk down the hall
You’ve done this before
haven’t you
A few times, yeah
My parents aren’t sound sleepers
I’m just so hungry
Can you hurry
Close now
Do you think they’ll hear us?
I’d be so embarrassed if your mom—
We’ll just come down again
Later—Late
Eat the breakfast Mom serves us too
No, maybe we shouldn’t. I can wait—
It’s fine
I brought the French press and
Columbian
Nevermind. That coffee smells too—
Mm-hmm, that’s what I thought.
We’re on the other side of the house now
Just sit and let me work
It’s my first time here
I want to make a good impression
Hush—
My parents love you.
Here, sip.
Mmm, heavenly.
How do people live without—
Breakfast is served
Eat up.
Damn— you’re amazing.
How did I get so luck—
Shit, I think they’re up.

13 Ways of Looking at My Body

1. Naked. Framed in the backlit window, my body reaches to close the curtains against a soft coverlet of external darkness.
2. I am my beloved’s and he is mine, his body is my body.
3. Men have gone to war for more foolish reasons than my body.
4. If there were no mirrors anywhere, I might love my body more than you crave it.
5. I am of two minds. The one that loves my body. And the one that lives in her.
6. When the shutter clicks, it flattens the image of my body into shapes and angles too nauseating to look at. Self-recognition deleted as pixels
7. Time is passing. My body must be changing.
8. Embalmers open the carotid artery, use a pump to fill bodies with formaldehyde. A child’s attempt at Godplay. My body is earth. No opening of arteries will capture what’s flown.
9. He used up my body like fossil fuels. Once, a fear pierced him: that I might leave him before he could extract all my potential. Havoc.
10. Currency takes many forms. The curve between my waist and iliac crest. The slope from my collar bones to underbust. Body contorted and compressed to earn her keep.
11. At midnight in July, the only rhythm for my body’s dance comes from firelight crackle and my lover’s labored breathing.
12. The little girl’s face is guarded by a hat made for a much larger body. Torso disappears behind a shield: a book written for adults. The picture could not protect my body emerging from that guarded child.
13. When my body ran out of sight, it marked the edge of known and unseen.

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