(a pleasure activism exercise)
I'm at a Marriott in Pueblo putting lotion on my nipples before bed when it hits and I've learned I've got to write it down when it hits I've lost too many poems to I'll remember it in the morning and, like, I don't know if you know this but it's damn hard to write with lotion slick hands and like, I don't know if you know this but announcing that lotion has cured your writer's block on social media leaves way too much to the imagination but damn if writing this thing with lotion slick hands doesn't feel like an orgasm like the one I found tucked between two stanzas in a poem a friend mailed to me last summer I don't know if you know this but turns out lesbians can give their gay friends orgasms let me explain about the lotion ill leave the orgasm to your imagination the Greeks came to lotion by way of Athena Athens chose that owled eyed butch over that totalitarian typhoon Poseidon and in gratitude cerebral Athena planted her spear and from it sprung olive oil like Athena I spend a lot of time up here at a young age the power of a man's hands split me from my body like Hephaestus split Athena from the crown of Zues and when my father disappeared like a poem I swear I'd remember in the morning I still found myself getting lost up here like a sailor at sea without the violence of Poseidon propelling him so I've learned that when it hits I've got to write it down and I don't know if you know this but trauma is a sensory hydra multiplying heads every time someone touches my body every time something feels like an orgasm but I figure if a lesbian can give me an orgasm without even touching my body maybe I can make Athena it's patron like she is up here so I made a promise to myself and I don't know if you know this but we get promise by way of Latin: to let go a promise to put lotion on this polis in front of my mirror every night and I don't know if you know this but a lot can get lost in the translation of a promise let me explain, I feel a solidarity with Medusa looking at herself in Perseus’ shield but I refuse to let this body be stone tonight so I lather promises all over this [body] on these shoulders I promise to shrug off the weight of an Acropolis that belongs to the past to allow myself to wrap these arms around shipwrecks in Poseidon's patriarchal seas to use these hands to help rebuild everything he's washed over to let these legs stop running from and redirect them towards a metamorphosis of my own making to explore this living, breathing, city-state of Pallas Athena all it’s shame ridden nooks and crannies and I don't know if you know this but nipples are so distracting like, so, so, SO distracting so at a Marriott in Pueblo where I'm feeling, like really feeling, these nips with lotion slick hands I make a different promise to these turquoise tips the Latin kind a synonym for pleasure, baby to let go and realize when it hits again I don't have to write it down
Caleb Ferganchick 