Oliver Jones

Q____

are you, he asked? it was not 
a proposition. your trunks make you look

like you've got 8 balls—he was right, 
the old bubbled fabric 

loose and baggy, like black frogspawn—
I said: what? his smart purple 

mouth, his narrow wet chest, droplets
still drying, light polkaing 

the skin; natural glitter—so different
from the word on his lips, long elegant 

word, sharp and curved—bent, 
they called it—like a beak or a boy—

where had he learned it? I stood up,
just in case, stood up straight

 —they called it—found my grip
on the vinyl nubs, our narrow 

chests, our sticklike limbs, all Vs
and Ls and never Us or Os

I said something, what did
I say? it wasn't N O

Is the Cure to Male Loneliness Retaking Constantinople?  

how about it then / o lantern jaw

jilted castle-reaper / siege engine &

bacon generator / boomer king /

cat-call apologist / avuncular

deity of the grind / gate

crusher / wood whisperer / man

ifold & secretive / ballad blasting

private weeper / penalty taker / lobster muncher /

crystal hater / horoscope sceptic

newspaper-visored / ottoman-hoofed

silly me that wants to talk and talk /

whisper through your father’s chokehold / 

I’ve blown my cover / explain offside again?

bar your gates / bolt your doors 

as I am your secret / tenderness

let me grow in you / a savage pansy

Oliver Sedano Jones’ work appears in The Oxford Review of Books, Tahoma Literary Review, bath magg, and elsewhere, with shortlistings for the Yeats Prize, the Wales Poetry Award, and the Plaza Prose Poetry Prize.