Seth Pennington presents a bold poem about masturbation and loneliness within a relationship.
How It Is Going to End
What frustration is this—
holding my own cock, visible
only in the light of pulsing
bodies on screen. I turn on
the lamp. A Tom Waits album
with a wad of toilet paper hiding
its cover. A Wandering
Jew, a Sago Palm, and that straining
curl of bamboo—its leaves browning from
neglect—stuck deep into
a Petron bottle. I
finish—wad into wad—no
longing for intimacy, no
longing for lust. A pit
curdles in my stomach, this
having to live with myself, with
you, this tongue coated in
a new white skin. In the morning,
you too—the shaking bed, your body
rigid, sheets rustling. Laying next to
you, I turn back into the hard cold.
***
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