There’s an addiction inside me.
Maybe us all? Every morsel
I roll, pour, or swallow
are columns of red stripes
bleeding down my legs. It’s you,
oversized and badly stitched.
Mismatched like a guest bed
for an unexpected visitor. May we
prolong the satisfaction
of undressing after another long,
humiliating day? It’s too early
for me to unbutton.
Alejandro Lucero’s chapbook, Sapello Son, was named the Editors’ Selection for the Frost Place Competition (Bull City Press, 2024). His latest work appears in Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, and Waxwing. He lives in Baltimore, where he is a Salter Lecturer in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and a senior editor for The Hopkins Review.
