“First Man,” “Deal With It,” and “The Socks”

“First Man,” “Deal With It,” and “The Socks”

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Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

First Man

Empty as the space

on the back of my neck

where the phantom of your

hand rests just

outside the confines of

my comfortable reach

you were this poem’s genesis,

coarse hands and language,

your tongue, like the ash

taking flight from my bluish body

as I self-immolated

at the cliché stake

silver-grey flecks cascading

onto the parched, forgotten fields

who begged for more,

that gnawing need

eclipsing all else

you were this poem’s genesis

and this poem is every

poem I have written since

Deal With It

Deal with the sanctuary

in the neglected temple that is

your head, desecrated and

littered with empties and cigarette butts

smoked down to the filters.

Deal with the footsteps

of the men who have stumbled

into this place, far from God and not looking

to pray. Deal with their names

scrawled on the pews and the piss

soaking the floor and the porno mags they left

scattered all over and full

of women who look an awful lot

like you. Deal with the smell

of unwashed bodies, human suffering,

inhuman rage, unsacred deeds.

Deal with the fact

that you’ve dealt with it,

that you’re smiling and nodding

and brushing your teeth and riding

the train and wearing clean

underwear and washing your face

and your hands and your hair.

Deal with the duality of presence.

Deal with the fact that God is

either everywhere or nowhere, and

all you can do in this fleeting lifetime

is try to deal with that.

The Socks

languished untouched on the windowsill

through the winter as though

expecting a voyeur to burst forth

from the frost and upend

a series of holes and her body

I never understood

the appeal of dressing up

like a fantasy’s fantasy

the imitation

of a woman or a wound,

scabs and tissue and

bruise-colored midnights

a series of holes, a nice body.

And does he still see me

unbushed through the window

frigid in unseemly thigh-highs?

I pry open my memory, its series of holes with

some tenuous connection to

another series of holes and my body.

About the Author

Katherine Orfinger

Katherine Orfinger is a writer and MFA candidate at Rosemont College. She takes her inspiration from her Floridian hometown, Jewish faith, and love of nature. Katherine's work has appeared in Beyond Queer Words, Touchstone, Aeolus, The Write Launch, Outrageous Fortune, and many others. She currently resides in Pennsylvania with her partner.