trash on the train tracks / Steph finds a remote controlled / vibrator a cheap one / vibrating egg on a wire / she tries to touch us with it we scream Ryan trips / into the ditch / comes up / with a stray hypodermic needle speared / thru his flip flop / & out the top / of his big toenail / we stop laughing until he jokes / about probably having AIDS already anyway / a year later jacking / someone off in a sleeping bag / in a tent / in the Adirondacks / it doesn’t matter who / the loneliest thing about being / Narcissus / is reaching / for yourself in everyone / in black water / in a canoe drifting / past bog gardens / orchids / & sundew fly traps / suddenly everyone has a dead dad / deer skull / in the woods / cancerous antlers strapped / to my back / hauling myself thru someone’s / caramel apple vape cloud outside the / Tesco station / thinking about / the great sad poems I’ll write / when I have a dead dad too / I love fetishizing / my own mistreatment / don’t I? / velvet scrunchies / littering my floor / like a bunch / of puckered buttholes / I get used to reaching / across the bed / & only touching / myself.
Gion Davis grew up on a sheep ranch in northern New Mexico. Her poetry has been featured in The Vassar Review, Blush Literary Journal, and Sybil Journal, among others. She received the Best New Poets of 2018 Prize, selected by Ocean Vuong, and was shortlisted for the Peach Magazine Gold Prize selected by Morgan Parker. She graduated with her MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst in 2019 and currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Gion can be found on Instagram @starkstateofmind.