Wrap Dress
You borrow my tie pin to hold the dress
closed where it keeps slipping open
over your breasts
I am the ripped knee of a pair of jeans
The pull tab for the bag of birdseed
The saw teeth on the edge of a roll of tape
The last stitch of a seam, secured once and then again
The spiral of a leaf
The inner curve of acorn’s cap
The apex
points down
to the arch of your sternum
I look and look away and look again
Rip the seam in a rush
Lose the acorn cap in leaf after leaf
My thigh tattoo peeking through the threadbare denim
Get scissors for the seed bag, open me
Run your thumb over the sticky side of the tape
When the cloth slips off your shoulders, falls
Untie, unpin, unbind me
Saturate
I carry a second pair of underwear
and in the middle of our make-out session
I change in the bathroom
because if I didn’t, I’d soak through my jeans.
Sometimes it’s still not enough
to stop the dark patch at the seam.
My first boyfriend used to joke about
chiseling himself out of his pants
and I didn’t know yet that boys
weren’t supposed to get this damn wet.
I thought, like me, he worried about being cemented
if we did not undress soon enough.
You assure me it’s good,
as the stain spreads to your thigh.
In the stories I read at night,
lovers are undone by getting their faces slick.
Mine asked me once if
he was going to need a towel.
I trace my finger over the descriptions of
lust-blown eyes and shiny chins,
as if it might make up for wearing panties
instead of briefs because they fold up better
to be tucked into the waterproof
bag I keep in my purse.
Filter
I will only send nudes in fragments;
my calf and tattoo sleeve, the beauty mark
on my breastbone, unlikely erogenous
zones, wrists and the tops of my feet.
I will not pose, and I do not care
what you like best. If we are doing this,
it’s for me. I will send you the slow filtering
of how I see myself in this body.
In return, I prefer sounds, so you can
send me short clips, or longer mp3s.
Streaming is fine, as are videos in darkness,
as long as I can hear your gasps and sighs.
If your begging with breath alone pleases me,
I might ask you to say a word here
or there. My new name is only one letter
Jerica Taylor is a non-binary neurodivergent queer cook, birder, and chicken herder. They have an MFA from Emerson College. Their work has appeared in Postscript, Versification, Feral Poetry, and perhappened. She lives with her wife and young daughter in Western Massachusetts.