National Poetry Month Day 4: “Both/Both” by Oliver Bendorf

BOTH/BOTH

“We were just kids.” –Patti Smith

I’m asking if she wants
dumbbells on the top
or sort of smack down

keeps saying ‘I don’t
know” with a sweet
I don’t know, I don’t

know, I don’t know
hallway again and a
breast in my hand

the tender way
without embarrassment
I have them too she

pulls me close and
goods me empty goods
me clean

we pronoun joyful
inside a hoarse pavilion
chins up roll it up

just kids coming back
to the picture smudgy gray
with a little bit of words

for our both chests
then an airplane leaving
the limits then love then

love then limits then
limits then love then
love then love then

 

Oliver Bendorf is the author of The Spectral Wilderness (Kent State UP 2015), selected by Mark Doty for the Wick Poetry Prize. New poems and visual art are forthcoming from cream city review, diode, and Sycamore Review.oliverbendorf.tumblr.com

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