Promises tugged.
Skin awaiting to be sawed.
Free from the loose strangle of wandering.
Lonely, bellyrubbed, kissed
like Christ on rosary.
Each new Moon a stoning.
An oxymoronous gorge of tangles.
Oxidization of cerulean incense.
All altars melt in rapture
as feathers fall from the sun,
angry, nuzzled, blessed.
Descending from dawn
their fruits pendulant,
unfurled, throbbing,
a quartet of heads ordered in cardinal seductions,
four beasts brass engraved
with affinity for the forlorn violets your body
threading their maws,
sequestering adipose duvet.
Asphyxiating, the longing,
laying underneath sunlight in bare want,
ready for the taking.
Two hundred oculi
bestow the body in phantasmagoric lathe
erroneous & holy, holy, holy.
Oculi gyre across the body,
shoulders spin for the next head be tasted,
holding a lover over a belly full with seven breasts,
flaming, their swords
divinely procrastinate.
WYRD LEA was born of the bayou, cesspit squirming carcinogens and moss glint. They were a she, daughter, sister, plaything. They were, before all these things, a seed from an orchard of bad ass bitches. Now, they write. Follow their fundraising efforts to save a queer, disabled danmei author from incarceration they cannot survive due to severity of disabilities and updates on the anti-queer crackdown in China at @savedanmeiauthors.
This story was originally published in The Headlight Review. It was a finalist for the 2024 Anthony Grooms Short Fiction Prize and will appear in James’s upcoming collection You Start Missing Everybody (Cornerstone Press 2028). Photo by
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VANTAGE is an explorer, photographer, artist and writer. Instagram – @_vantage1_ Link Instagram