The Flesh Between Us
Eroticism cut from classical mythology, ritual, and intimacy
 
In The Flesh Between Us the speaker explores our connections to each other, whether they be lovely or painful, static or constantly shifting, or, above all, unavoidable and necessary. Intensely and unapologetically homoerotic in content and theme, The Flesh Between Us sensuously conducts the meetings between strangers, between lovers, between friends and family, between eater and eaten, between the soul and the body that contains it. Pushing the boundaries of what has been traditionally acceptable for gay and erotic content and themes, the poems adapt persona, Greek mythology, Judaism, and classic poetic forms to interrogate the speaker’s relationship to god and faith, to love and sex, to mother and father. 
 
Stark and mythical, the imagery draws from the language of animals and nature. Episodes of kink tangle with creatures of forests and lore. In this tumult, the lines of poetry keep a sense of boundary and distance by the seeming incompatibility of their subjects: daybreak and dissection, human and insect, worship and reality. The touch of irreconcilable bodies, in Adkisson’s language, intimates the precise moment of love. The idea of love moves viscerally through rib, lung, throat, and mouth. The poems show how flesh opens in so many ways, in prayers, in bleeds, in ruts. The flesh, opened, begins to swell. If there is guilt in this, Adkisson’s poems refuse the placid satisfaction of confession. Whatever attachments the reader dares to draw must be made with blade or tongue. The reader must commit to the potential violence narrated by these poems.
 
1138689443
The Flesh Between Us
Eroticism cut from classical mythology, ritual, and intimacy
 
In The Flesh Between Us the speaker explores our connections to each other, whether they be lovely or painful, static or constantly shifting, or, above all, unavoidable and necessary. Intensely and unapologetically homoerotic in content and theme, The Flesh Between Us sensuously conducts the meetings between strangers, between lovers, between friends and family, between eater and eaten, between the soul and the body that contains it. Pushing the boundaries of what has been traditionally acceptable for gay and erotic content and themes, the poems adapt persona, Greek mythology, Judaism, and classic poetic forms to interrogate the speaker’s relationship to god and faith, to love and sex, to mother and father. 
 
Stark and mythical, the imagery draws from the language of animals and nature. Episodes of kink tangle with creatures of forests and lore. In this tumult, the lines of poetry keep a sense of boundary and distance by the seeming incompatibility of their subjects: daybreak and dissection, human and insect, worship and reality. The touch of irreconcilable bodies, in Adkisson’s language, intimates the precise moment of love. The idea of love moves viscerally through rib, lung, throat, and mouth. The poems show how flesh opens in so many ways, in prayers, in bleeds, in ruts. The flesh, opened, begins to swell. If there is guilt in this, Adkisson’s poems refuse the placid satisfaction of confession. Whatever attachments the reader dares to draw must be made with blade or tongue. The reader must commit to the potential violence narrated by these poems.
 
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The Flesh Between Us

The Flesh Between Us

by Tory Adkisson
The Flesh Between Us

The Flesh Between Us

by Tory Adkisson

eBook

$10.99 

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Overview

Eroticism cut from classical mythology, ritual, and intimacy
 
In The Flesh Between Us the speaker explores our connections to each other, whether they be lovely or painful, static or constantly shifting, or, above all, unavoidable and necessary. Intensely and unapologetically homoerotic in content and theme, The Flesh Between Us sensuously conducts the meetings between strangers, between lovers, between friends and family, between eater and eaten, between the soul and the body that contains it. Pushing the boundaries of what has been traditionally acceptable for gay and erotic content and themes, the poems adapt persona, Greek mythology, Judaism, and classic poetic forms to interrogate the speaker’s relationship to god and faith, to love and sex, to mother and father. 
 
Stark and mythical, the imagery draws from the language of animals and nature. Episodes of kink tangle with creatures of forests and lore. In this tumult, the lines of poetry keep a sense of boundary and distance by the seeming incompatibility of their subjects: daybreak and dissection, human and insect, worship and reality. The touch of irreconcilable bodies, in Adkisson’s language, intimates the precise moment of love. The idea of love moves viscerally through rib, lung, throat, and mouth. The poems show how flesh opens in so many ways, in prayers, in bleeds, in ruts. The flesh, opened, begins to swell. If there is guilt in this, Adkisson’s poems refuse the placid satisfaction of confession. Whatever attachments the reader dares to draw must be made with blade or tongue. The reader must commit to the potential violence narrated by these poems.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780809338436
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date: 10/11/2021
Series: Crab Orchard Series in Poetry
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 82
File size: 536 KB

About the Author

Tory Adkisson’s work has been featured in anthologies such as Best New Poets and Queer Nature. His poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, the Adroit JournalLos Angeles ReviewBoston Review, and Cimarron Review

Read an Excerpt

HOMOSEXUALITY

Desire, I drape over my chest
so you know what flag I bear,
what nation I want to land on
when the rescue workers
& newscasters have pulled me
from the dark, allowing me to
rinse my foliate feathers, shed
my oily skin—& with wings
steeped in fire, they won’t be able
to look at me—the light would burn
pinholes in their pupils—
& what they will ask as they kneel
is How long does the bridge run
in your heart, how deliberately
dark is the birdcage. I will give them
an answer & after they’ve kissed
my feet, I will give them a pair
of sunglasses, so when I sit down
to eat they’ll be able to see clear
through my throat to the window
behind it & wait their turn to
bring a knife & fork to the table.


POST-MORTEM AUBADE

The scalpel carves out
a sliver of bone where the humerus
hollows into the shoulder
blade. Be careful removing
soft tissue—the cartilage & keel,
the lungs branching like cedars
down the trunk of the sternum.
When you pull the brain out, wrench it
softly so the stem, like an umbilical
cord, comes with it. Remove
one wing, then the other. Splay them
on the table & take notes on proportion, on arc—
how crow-like they are, how they seem
capable of flight in only the most dire
circumstances. The only conclusion
you can draw at this time is the cause
of death was exposure. When you’re finished
allowing your gloves to plummet
from your hands like robin’s
eggs, don’t hesitate to break
the halo: another word for wish
-bone, another word for worry.

PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER AS THE TROJAN HORSE

Say father, father & listen for war. Stay
quiet and listen for a drum

beat, the same as the heart of war.
The breath of men is a reckless sound

that splinters in the throat. Dad drinks
a little then a little more, and I wait and I wait.

When the Greeks leave they leave their shadows
burned into the walls, their ships

hurtling away from the coast
like a wake of vultures toward another

carcass that must be pillaged.
All it took to sack the city of Troy

was letting the wrong horse into its stables.
And me? I was the poor fool who listened

against the slats of his wooden
flank for a sound like love

and always let him in.

Table of Contents

Contents

Self-Portrait with My Eidolon
The Garden
Anecdote of the Pig
Gnostic Aubade
The Faun
Spring in Paradise
California
Ode to Sneakers
To Be Loved
Figure Study
Portrait of My Mother as Penelope
Anecdote of the Rabbit
Duende
Summer in Paradise
Homosexuality
Lusus Naturae
Somewhere Between Memory
Anecdote of the Osprey
Taming Eros
Without Brains or Backbone
X & Y
The Throne
Coronation
Portrait of My Mother as Demeter
Cicadas
Your Animal Heart
Homophone
Autumn in Paradise
The Meadow
Anecdote of the Fox
First Harvest
Self-Portrait During a Tornado Sighting
Wilderness of Flesh
Post-Mortem Aubade
Echolalia
Portrait of My Father as the Trojan Horse
Anecdote of the Swan
Hornets
Scarecrows
Winter in Paradise
Sort Sol
The Orchard Keeper
Adam’s Apple
Doubting the Gods
Orientalism
Self-Portrait as a Butoh Dancer
Bareback Cartography
Aubade with Tortoiseshell & Ox
Thought, Barefoot
Fallout
The Problem with Wings

Acknowledgments
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