RogueAgent

Nearly always, I was a six,
somewhere between a five and a six,

I’d say, between moderate and severe,
between tiger lily and hot house orchid,

between learning how to sound out a word
I’d only ever read, and learning how to spell

despair, be in disrepair, what’s the difference,
I asked, between pain and discomfort,

am I feeling pain that you’ve cut off my breasts,
that you’ve slit me from hip bone to hip bone

and taken skin and fat from my abdomen,
taken the tiniest blood vessels and moved them

to make these sort of breast-looking breasts, or is it
discomfort, is it discomfort, is it discomfort

that I cannot roll over onto my side, look at the birds
out the window, that someone has to help me

to the bathroom, that someone, or maybe just me,
will have to put on these disposable gloves—

bought to go grocery shopping in the early days
of the pandemic, o how we washed the plums!—

and use these gloves now to drag the shit out of me,
the shit that collects and collects from all the drugs.

Is that pain, is that discomfort, is the crying
into the sink, is the nipple falling off in the shower,

or the other that was hanging on by what seemed
to be a thread, how I took my toenail clippers to it,

the wince, the flushing it down the toilet so as not
to draw rats to the trash. Pain, I’d say, yes, somewhere

between a five and a six, I think, but maybe
a two or so, maybe an eight, but god, I’m ready

for a pleasure scale, and not moderate pleasure, I want
severe. Severed but raptured. Not comfort but pleasure.

 Pure unadulterated pleasure. Ten, I want to say, ten.

back to contents

prev
next