"Two Poems" by Sophie Farthing

Raspberry Sonnet (To My Butch, i.)

Cream cheese on raisin bagels dill and thyme

Cinnamon sugar apples peeled and sliced

Tooth-slivered salmon Gruyère salt on lime

The physiology of petite-diced

Ripe mangos pecan splits blueberry skin

Sweet almond paste puff pastry bouillabaisse

Carrot I kumquat and you muscadine

Rum cake moscato pesto butter glaze

Grilled plums disjointed thumbs fried shrimp and grits

Starfruit you in my bacon gravy eyes

Cold chamomile sea salt and cherry pits

We coriander kiss our thunder thighs

My butch risotto bat my collard queen

My Brussel sprout my plate-lick syrup clean

To My Butch, ii.

Today you wrote a letter to yourself. You didn’t cry about it, but it was a near thing, so I made you chamomile in the Dolly Parton mug for comfort. Now you are playing Spiderman on the TV, on the widescreen that was my first big gift to you when they increased my credit limit. I am steaming broccoli in a bag. The dog is snoring and dreaming and twitching her paws, and in July we have taxes to pay. Do you know–I do not know how to say it–what you do to the rough secret inside of me when you wear the blue shirt, what you do to me when you smile? I could gaze forever at the way you stretch your inked arms wide, flaunting the dark hair that at last you are not hiding.

Sophie Farthing (she/her) is a queer writer and artist living in South Carolina. Her work has appeared in outlets including Right Hand Pointing, Beyond Queer Words, Impossible Archetype, and Anti-Heroin Chic. Her poetry is also featured in the horror anthology "it always finds me" from Querencia Press. She is the 2024 recipient of the Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Poetry from the South Carolina Academy of Authors.