Prone
Seventeen and all implicit.
The newly installed internet
nods yes, yes with every site
visited, the bodies like sweets -
not ones given out as reward
or curbed for fear of cavities
but a yielding to what is stirred
with his gradually loading thighs.
Saved in a mislabeled folder
for occasional peepshows,
the picture’s eyes roam all over
the boy quietly disrobing.
He lays prone under the image,
offering himself as pillage.
Mark Ward
Pronouns: He/His
2 Poems
Prone
I Wonder What Your Cock Tastes
Like
I Wonder What Your Cock Tastes Like
An avalanche, an acid bath,
a courtesy telephone, a dream
in which a repressed memory comes
to light, an elegant dress, a fire
causing me to gurn, or are you getting
close, a holiday romance, idolatry,
you overconfident jackeen, you’re kryptonite,
lethargic, lambent, a molly lapping the room,
a nothingness in which I fall into, an obstruction
in your otherwise perfect body,
poetry framed by your prick,
a question I never could formulate,
a riot, a shout loosing its way out
through the throat, making space
for your ugliness that I lick up,
venous, a vacation from the world,
a woman, a xylophone struck,
a terrible awareness of us, of you coming
back to ourselves, the terror in your eyes at
what comes next, an overzealous exit.
Mark Ward (he/his) is the author of the chapbooks, Circumference (Finishing Line Press, 2018) and Carcass (Seven Kitchens Press, 2020) and a full-length collection, Nightlight (Salmon Poetry, 2022). He has recorded poems for RTÉ Radio 1’s Arena and The Poetry Programme, Lyric FM’s Poetry File and the podcast Words Lightly Spoken. He is the founding editor of Impossible Archetype, an international journal of LGBTQ+ poetry, now in its fourth year.
