Jos Charles

Poem With a Double Entendre In It


i’m dying, jos, my dick tells me in line
buying mascara at target

i’m dying tonight in someone’s arms
all fucking night into my ear on my goddamn iphone

i’m dying easily slowly in your deadening
winter sleep my dick whispers

her and i are pretty close you could
say, twin sisters fussing over blankets

at the beach. one reaches to the other
and touches her hair. it’s going

to be alright she says and the waves
spray fresh salt water on their faces.

i was born two weeks early and the doctor
declared me a boy because my dick

was already dying and his dick was dying
too. i mean men are in love with death

because it’s ABSTRACT ENUFF to convince
them they matter. it’s ABSTRACT ENUFF

like penguins in red shoes singing we don’t have it
so good. i’m not jealous i’m just

trying to explain my life, my dick says.
i try to listen but i forget sometimes

and with the cool air i don’t know, jos, this world
of ours, she says, it just gets so fucking hard

Jos Charles is a southern-California writer and founding-editor at THEM—a trans* literary journal. Their poetry publications include Denver Quarterly, BLOOM, Radioactive Moat, the YOLO pages, and Metazen. They also have writing featured on Huffington Post, Bitch Magazine, The Fanzine, and variously online.