Dionysos at the Blue Moon, four rounds deep
it’s in my nature, it is my nature black curls limp down a clammy neck and bleary burgundy eyes
losing time in little sips of infinity but his skin still glows
there is no running from the melted gold in your veins,
King of Carousers, Lord of the Bacchanal did you forget that this is supposed to be fun
and drinking alone is a modern invention we are so far from the shrieking laughter of lilac-skinned women,
a muscular wrist gripping an overflowing urn, fresh blood of lambs and grapes mixing together on a bronze altar,
centuries since you have been properly worshipped
there is no place for a god of excess here
in a land where each day reeks of too much
I’m sorry that we never held you sacred
it’s too hard to remember that having more
than enough is something to celebrate.
My Type
“What’s your type?” My type is dark-haired prettyboys with tattoos and silver jewelry nails painted black and blue and red questionable facial hair and cheekbones I could cut my hand on, short
or tall it doesn’t matter but he does have glasses and probably a very large
record collection.
My type is musicians who leave it all on the basement floor angry ragged punks with heartbreaker eyes and gentle voices studs on scarred skin blood in their teeth and saintlike hearts living past 27 only to wish they hadn’t, living like nomads on neverending roads, living in
communes with dirty dishes and multiple partners, holding me at arm’s length because I’ll never be one of them but I am happy just being here
and I will always understand.
My type is soft and sweet smiling nonbinary angels who have been through it all but wake up every day with love for each other, who raise plants like children and feed me when I cannot do it myself, my type says fuck the whole idea of gender
with names like Rainbow and Starfruit and Erryn they have glitter in their beds and wisdom pouring out of them in fountains and I find myself laughing at things they said hours or years later, delighted to know them, delighted they exist.
My type is gorgeous brown bad bitches with curves to make you cry and faces to make you sing quick-smiling, self-possessed women I wish I could behold forever
bilingual and trilingual divine geniuses with glossy hair and expensive shoes and the softest skin I have ever felt. My type is girls who know what they want and boys who don’t my type is sadists who will put knives in my mouth just for the fuck of it
who will tie me up and hurt me but only if I ask nicely.
My type is motorcycle metalheads and divorcees with bad credit and alcoholics and sociopathic
liars and all the teachers who made me their pet and submissive goth men and the terminally
Online and promiscuous communists and cat people and the ones who could never love me back
and the ones who already do and the ones I am running towards or running away from and the
ones I want to be like and the ones who want to be like me, there you go I hope your question is
answered now, that is my type.
What's yours?
Auzin is a writer in the Pacific Northwest. She is a chronic daydreamer, always cold, and usually in love. She hopes these are good qualities for a poet.