NEW! Poem by Kelli Anne Noftle

Kelli Anne Noftle

MATING RITUALS

You feel listless as underthings
unravel. At the bottom
of an ocean, near her neck
where the collar dips—some of the habits
you acquire are ancient.
On the one hand, you’ve been
cannibal, pausing only
to swallow light and motion. (It happens
so quickly, it’s already over.) In the other hand—
her jaw. Her eyelashes, rhinophores, and that other
sensory sublimation by which you grasp only
through tangled weeds, against the under-
belly of waking, your insides, out.
Your heart, a slipknot of mucus.

And this question: if all the corresponding regions
make her sigh, then how did specializing
in your own desire become
so stereotypical, homo sapien?





Adult sea slugs are all hermaphroditic, though they still require partners to copulate. Some will engage in long elaborate courtships, joined together in intercourse for extended periods of time.