How I Falter in Psychotherapy To Say I’ve Only Been with Asian Men

This is what I need to never lose:

skin on skin. A mouth flamed in hunger

all that lucent, fetid heat.

I was and was not left silent in that ambit —

I crave no bygones to be bygone

with so much of me left to prove

Those narrow rooms those frames of flesh

afterimages of all the vastness

I could whittle into boundaries

such watery windows

fronting the world where it all went down

A paradise lost                         Where few returned

---

JC Alfier’s (she/her) most recent book of poetry is The Shadow Field. Journal credits include Copper Nickel, Faultline, Fugue, Notre Dame Review, Penn Review, River Styx, and Vassar Review. She is also a collage artist after the styles of Francesca Woodman, Brittany Markert, and Katrien De Blauwer.