Intoxication
for J
For years, my heart was drunk
on you — each sight
an intoxicant, unknowing
future.
Your hair,
the shine of wheat
are vodka shots.
Your piano-slender fingers
are fine liquors,
tempting
adventures in the air.
A suburban style — no Armani
suits,
masculinity as common
as rubber-black
thongs,
you are my Toohey’s New.
My lover-
less body,
a cavern inebriated with longing
f
a
l
l
s
before you.
Sacrificial Pyre
After 12 hours, we walked away from Platform 22, hands
entwined. Later, we sat in a taxi’s dark back seat.
Matraville, thanks, mate, you said. I sank into the upholstery.
You leaned over, whispered, I’ve taken an eccie. I smiled.
And drunk too much beer! Your lips a tight line, I sat up
straight. Frowns rippled my forehead. In Cleveland Street
at a red light, you pushed me to your groin.
No. I shook my head. You glared, your eyes blue-fire.
You shoved a second time. Fatigue bent my resistance.
Mouth in your lap, you held my head, thrust my face.
Imprisoned grip loosened, I moved away, houses,
streetlights of Maroubra Junction a daze.
The cab stopped outside your house. Thanks mate, you said.
Keep the change. The driver smiled, nodded.
A scene of drinking tea crossed my mind.
Inside, your hands on my shoulders, you forced me
to the bedroom.
What demons were released from your nightmares?
You said, I like it when you’re amenable.
Held down on the mattress, you clambered on top.
I reached for lube; you swiped it away.
Time unhinged. You rammed your hard cock in.
Seconds became eternities. Each thrust a torture,
my tight hold combusted as a sacrificial pyre.
You grunted, rolled off, turned over.
Your back a chasm of our desire,
blood on the sheet sacrifices to your power.
Radiant
1.
The years with you were cycles of wax and wane — sometimes
we were a bright star in your gravity’s orbit; sometimes
I was a nova.
With your sun falling behind a memory of lightness,
I rotated to a dead star.
2.
Three years after the burnout, I picked a second-hand
novel from my bookshelves.
On re-reading it, I found the bookmark, your photograph
inside the back cover.
Your blue-orbed menace
still trembled my second skin.
3.
One night, two years later, I sat on the back steps,
gazed at the galaxies.
The skies,
a million light years deep, glittered
& the miraculous
wild and only known to itself.
came near.
4.
I listened in its silence, looked at the photograph again
recollected our recent meeting at a dance party.
You said, I thought you might still be angry with me.
I said, Fifteen years is long enough to be angry with you.
We hugged
Our past was a star — shining, distinct
& had moved to another part in night’s sky.
5.
Radiant,
my new star revolves on its own axis.
Awarded a 2024 ASA/CA Award Mentorship for Poetry & Shortlisted for 2024 Flying Islands Poetry Manuscript Prize, Peter Mitchell (he/him/they), an internationally-published, award-winning queer writer, lives on Widjabul Wia-bal Country. Working across all narrative forms, his writing has appeared in international & national print & online journals, anthologies & websites; his poetry specifically has appeared in Rabbit: A Journal for Non-Fiction Poetry, StylusLit, The Ekphrastic Review (USA), ergi press zine (UK), Eureka Street, Lavender Bones Magazine (USA), The Blue Nib (Ireland), Blue Bottle Journal, Writing Water: Rain River Reef (Red Room Poetry, 2020), & the international anthology, Queer Love Queer Lives 2 (Muswell Press [UK], 2023), among others. The recipient of fellowships, mentorships & a 2015 Writer with Disability grant (Australia Council) & participating in poetry/art & poetry/architecture collaborations & translated into Spanish (Translator: María Del Castillo Sucerquia, Poeta, agente literaria y traductora). Peter has authored two poetry chapbooks, The Scarlet Moment (Picaro Press, 2009) & Conspiracy of Skin (Ginninderra Press, 2018) which was Highly Commended in the 2019 Wesley Michel Wright Prize for Poetry. Find him at https://peter-mitchell.com.au, on Instagram @petermitchell546 & Facebook at ‘Peter Mitchell Author’.