Shapeshifters' Love Poem

Shapeshifters' Love Poem

By Todd Dillard

I want to fuck you up
the way you fuck me up:

kiss you like a sock of quarters
and watch your face shatter
like dropped cymbals.

Let your eyes be neon,
a beer sign burning
in a bar window,

then let the way
I say your name
be a drive-by rain
of bullets and tire smoke,
so you explode
brilliant and galactic.

Leap to me,
oh my sweet
arson victim
I am your snipped jumping sheet.

I want only to hold
your unstitched body,
to see the lit fuse
reflected in your eyes.

Now kiss me like a nooned magnifying glass,
I am your kicked anthill.

Do with me what you would do
with any bald tire.

* * *

Todd Dillard’s work has appeared most recently in McSweeney’s Internet Tendencies, Electric Literature, Abyss & Apex, and Midnight Breakfast.

What advice do you have for other poets?

It’s OK to write bad poems. Some of my best lines have been salvaged from poems I initially wanted to abandon, and had I given up, I would have nothing to show for it. Also, floss daily.