Photo: U.S. Forest Service
We end up on the steady tip of Sex Peak, Montana
(I have been many times before)
and set the candy-yellow trailer against the caramelizing
sunset. He brings out an untouched Cab Sav, pops it, and I watch flowers grow out of the bottle
and writhe toward the ground.
Let me reach with them. Let me savor and yearn
with gentle fingers full of pollen,
ready to be carried away on the hips of a bumble bee.
Rarely do we let others carry us
in the square of our back pockets (green on the ass with grass)
but let me hold him and wander
through the flowering carnalities of phacelias
and irises and buttercups,
through strong ventricles of deciduous root systems
(beneath the earthy face),
through roaring campfire karaoke and midnight
ashen speakings.
We wake to sprinkled, crystalline dew over the trailer
and watch fog dissipate
from cotton to cloud to the stringy memory
of last night. This morning,
we’re all plum smiles and hot yolks
and federal land.
Sam Boudreau (He/They) is a queer Vermonter living near Lake Champlain. He is a graduate from Middlebury College and the University of Montana’s MFA program in poetry, where he taught Intro to Composition, Intermediate Composition, and a Poetry Workshop. Previously, Sam was a reader for CutBank Literary Magazine and Electric Literature. His writing generally resonates on the body’s interconnectedness with the environment and queer intimacy (or its lackthereof), and has appeared in miniskirt magazine.