THREE POEMS

men picking rock 

yet this pockmarked fleshen

spine You dig smut fingers in

like my god turning over warming earth

i’m so tough

i just fall off the bone

gravel and god

pagan heaven is the freckled arm

of an abandoned parking lot heckler loiterer loner

beckoner betrother

married to the waistband of my shorts

bury me nose-first in the grey-blond forest

of his grappling right shoulder

the more warrior of us behind this forgotten church

wielding the last blade of grass, to-days dew-sheet of hymn and me

skinny dipping with trans men

T-square edges            buzzed boycuts

            measure up to my neck

close enough to breathe on glass-       hairs

some collarbones still saranwrapped like skin

jealous of other              menpickled flesh

shrill Marchbreeze pitching arms over chests

slush IPAs tucked          between moist fingers

           tasting like fear or fish

Ulysses Armel (he/him/his) is a white, bi, non-cis cub from Minnesota. His poems appear in publications like Pan’s Ex (Qommunicate Publishing), Lovejets (Squares and Rebels), and the inaugural issue of the world wide web’s Lion Pride Zines.