Poem 83 ± August 26

Scott Wiggerman
Surrender, Dorothy

When you told me you were positive,
I smirked and vamped, *You slut!*
How I hated needles and hospitals!
What else but love could compel
me to accompany you each time?
But I believe it was then I began
to think of your dick as a syringe.

Being sexy when you got hard
was a tribute to my acting skills,
your cum a shot of poisons
that could kill me. I flinched
every time you came—even with a condom—
like anticipating the prick
of the needle in pinched but accepting flesh.

I continued to swallow, too.
Spitting seemed futile,
dental dams ridiculous.
Your spunk tasted ever more acrid.
My imagination, or your meds?

I positively loved you, I joked.
Would it be so bad if we shared
the virus like a pair of banished lovers
melting in the bond of blood?
Would it take surrender to have your dick
be just a dick again?

Scott WiggermanScott Wiggerman is the author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets (purple flag, 2015), Presence (Pecan Grove, 2011), and Vegetables and Other Relationships (Plain View, 2000); and the editor of several volumes, including Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry (Dos Gatos, 2011), Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga (Dos Gatos, 2013), and Wingbeats II (Dos Gatos, 2014). He is an editor for Dos Gatos Press in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

This poem is not previously published.