How it Colours Your Tongue - Loren Thomas
Alcohol cleanses.
Rub our walls
with it
before
we hang our memories.
Dip our hands
to kill
microbes.
Threaten cells.
I was thirteen the first time
I got drunk.
We traded Christmas for poison
as a rite of passage.
Our ‘rents watched on
as we slurred adoration.
Our marks of pride in shiny glass bottles
with blue perfume
better than the stain on the underwear
or the clashing of genitals.
We pour one out
to mark the
passing.
We pour one out
to
cleanse.
I cleanse love.
Tomorrow I love him
and I’ll drink
to cleanse
limbic
Cleanse
limbic
cleanse
limbicclea
nselim
bic
Contributor's Note
Loren Thomas is a Waikato University graduate, poet, and photographer, previously published in Mayhem, Poetry New Zealand, and collaboratively with essa ranapiri and Aimee-Jane Anderson-O'Connor in Starling.