Quintin Collins
The Chicken Wing Speaks of Love
Maybe you don't understand what it means to love
with hunger: to pull apart and gnaw goodness,
veins hooked in your teeth.
I'm tenderness you pick clean
from bone, massage from your molars
with your tongue.
How else can you peel back a lover's skin,
wade into the fat, consume
something whole? Nibble the gristle
in my love, wads of napkins translucent with grease.
Fry me hard. Split me,
drumette from wingette. Undress me,
breading from tips. Devour, your palate
lemon-pepper purified, tongue mild sauce
blessed. Don't you know
love is messy? How can you not crave
this filth, a love that leaves
a pile of bones?
with hunger: to pull apart and gnaw goodness,
veins hooked in your teeth.
I'm tenderness you pick clean
from bone, massage from your molars
with your tongue.
How else can you peel back a lover's skin,
wade into the fat, consume
something whole? Nibble the gristle
in my love, wads of napkins translucent with grease.
Fry me hard. Split me,
drumette from wingette. Undress me,
breading from tips. Devour, your palate
lemon-pepper purified, tongue mild sauce
blessed. Don't you know
love is messy? How can you not crave
this filth, a love that leaves
a pile of bones?
Biography
Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, editor, and Solstice MFA Program Assistant Director. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Homology Lit, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. He also received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2019. Quintin likes to post poems and writing memes on his Twitter (@qcollinswriter). He thinks the memes are funny sometimes, but that's debatable.
Find him on Linktree (https://linktr.ee/qcollinswriter) and Twitter (@qcollinswriter). |