“¡Ay! ¡Dámelo duro, papi!” your kid

sister said as she sank down, swallowing

me whole. All that your crank father forbid

we’ve done. “¡Papito!” you sang out, hanging

out near Daddy Frank’s. “Wanna babysit?”

With bong hits in the sauna. With frost’s hoar,

winter’s ire. With my mouth glued to your clit

as your sister’s toes curled. I’m thirty-four,

renting a cabin near Mount Pisgah. Gales

on the island last for days. Your father’s

rage paled before the haze of our chronic

cuddles and cum. He fears, “sinful females.”

Fear? This is our faith, our church, our scriptures.

¡Ay! this is what the saints would call epic.

][][

notes:

The poem takes places on Beaver Island, located in northern Lake Michigan. Daddy Frank’s is an ice cream shop in St. James (the island’s only town). When the Mormon migrated to Utah way back when a break-away sect, led by a man named Jesse Strang, settled instead on Beaver. Strang declared himself king and island a kingdom separate from America. This did not end well and in 1856 he was assassinated. Very little of the Mormon community remains except for a couple of biblical names found on the map; for example, Mount Pisgah, the highest point on the island, is a 150 foot tall sand dune. In Spanish, “¡Ay! ¡Dámelo duro!” translates into, “O! Give it to me hard!” Papito and papi are different ways of saying Daddy.