Sibyl of Cumae

Would-be lovers will not want forever.

Edging feels a satin yard of inside,

but its edge penknifes—

so short and straight, 

the letting come (and go).  

They’ll gravel you—for and with—holding out.

I can be Boy Atthis with what remains.

Knees now footed for kneeling,

a rictus meets erection and

masks my ditch-grave mouth.

Both endings—ditch and grave—are man-made. 

More Than a Mouth

If the love-cursed Sibyl of Cumae 

graveled in a Mason Jar, would moonshine

dissolve her fully and offer easeful death?

I prefer drinking to

eating the pea-green 

soup of yearning.

If Sibyl’s voice is sweet

and her jar is clear, 

she might be asked what she wants.

My conscience chokes

in hanging like the omen,

“your bounds will dissolve.”

It boomerangs 

and strikes me as I try

erasing my guilt from the diary

of bodies I have 

tended like moths

in Mason Jars.

In catering to men, 
I have become

a thoughtful tender

of bar and body.

And why should I 

let guilt revenge itself

on me? I look nothing

like Augustine’s Sibyl, 

foretelling a Christ

that will smother me out

of the predicting business—

I only tell the men

who ask to fuck me

what they already know, 

and they always act surprised.

Nové koření[1]

I. Cinnamon has been used to embalm, to sweeten, and to keep wars going. When you have never been tasted, any spice is welcome, but I’d ruin myself for a pinch of the rare thing. I traced his chest tattoo at Tipitina’s for the night; I mummified myself to wrest a year. Pliny the Elder wrote that in Rome, cinnamon bought fifteen times more than silver. It took me fifteen asks to find out I’d become a depreciating asset without knowing—but then, a depreciating asset doesn’t feel its value in freefall until it hits a branch or the ledge of a building. He called it “lunch,” but it lasted all day—I left in December, and his new stock started paying on Epiphany.  

I pretended my taste was expensive so long that everything I once loved felt like dirt in my mouth.

II. Cloves share a bed well with black pepper, almost to the point where you can taste one in the other. While he did not have a taste for me that night, his hands were tired and needed holding; I was certain I had enough cinnamon on me to suggest a pleasing flavor. I wore out Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits that year but apparently skipped “Dreams” in each listen. Our every-Sunday brunch at the Market came early at the end and at night—“I texted my ex; we met up and I blew him.” I could only think of folding dampened sheets without the grace of a breeze or clothesline. He will ask me later if I think “monogamy is natural,” and it will only now register as a stupid question. 

I repeated “cloves are sweet” for so long that I started using black pepper in perníčky instead of sugar and grew accustomed to tastelessness. 

III. Anise star’s sweetness is often left to the whims of our faulty perception; most do not know it’s been medicine for millennia. I met her at what I thought was my best. This was enough for me—it shouldn’t have been. We found the new year three midnights in each other’s mouths, each odd-numbered. The next even year, she would become herself, and I would realize I was still in freefall—at least I’d be free of all former residues. 

Perníčky are all lovable, but each one wants its particular painting, to be a star if it is shaped so; I mourn becoming a devouring thing.

[1]  Nové koření in Czech—my great-grandmother’s language not passed down to me—means “All-spice,” and perníčky a decorated gingerbread cookies. 

Thom C. Addington (he/him) is a queer, Catholic, rural Southern poet with Appalachian roots raised on Rappahannock land in King & Queen County, Virginia. He currently serves as Associate Dean of Humanities & Social Sciences at Reynolds Community College.