Bikini Atoll

Originally published in Puerto Del Sol

Colten Dom

To the atom-sick goat at a crossroads: thank you.

You gave us forty-eight kilograms of shared meanness

and chewed cud; in return,

we will make you into cancer.

Enjoy

a blood transfusion performed by men with masks

and college degrees and

kids of their own.

You were a sailor, for an hour or two, singed beard

and all—now you must go

off to dreams of protonic suns

blessing the tropical beach of your heritage.

Look down—you’re surfing,

your bikini looks lovely;

the ledger will say medical experimentation,

probably.

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Constellation

Originally published in Ignatian Literary Magazine

Colten Dom

My hands turn to your back like

tonight’s sky, gleaming

somewhere in an ancestral skull

revealed by a retreating glacier—

reconvened after a cloudy evening,

squinting, kneading familiar structures,

lines of gravity placing each stain

as I find it.

Freckles metastasize; stars pull and

are themselves pulled.

You touch my skin to

assign texture—pink-amber like

boiling syrup—the furred places

you bury your nose.

Do you see riders, belts, gods?

Waypoint divinities—or have

those charts faded to ruin?

Each library redrafts heaven;

ply the waters and yank free

from our nighttime, massaging

constellations clean of curse,

counting the moles

penned by that senseless author sun.

In future,

your freckles will decompose

into a raincloud—fragments

of skin turning to stone ’til

we map one another again

on canvas sheets. For now,

I look upon your back and think

What a terrific yawn!

What a gorgeous sneeze!

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