Image: Attila Kozo
And this is how you wear a sock
over your head: stretch
& cotton-sweat, lips
coy as petals,
whetted then struck
by a barbarous tugging—
smell of grass,
of cinnamon,
of aftershave still on scuttling
hand. I live in denim musk,
a clam unshelled and
flowering
in classroom, lockerroom, bathroom stall—
I live to enthrall and be enthralled.
I live like most things: a burgeoning,
then pink-shrink & loll.

__with_some_great_friends___by_A_T_I_S

     

Max McDonough

Max McDonough grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but escaped to sub-rural Virginia at the age of sixteen. When night expeditions to the local Walmart parking lot there became too perilous, he matriculated to the University of Virginia where he failed to become a surgeon and instead pursued a degree in English. He is an MFA candidate at Vanderbilt University, head nonfiction editor of Nashville Review, and has work forthcoming in Columbia Poetry Review.

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