Embedded Files
On Keeping Myself Warm
Never had nobody not be me. Looked around, saw only
my face. Surprised when I spoke what I wouldn’t mean,
reached out my fingers to the mirror & met real spit
on my thumbs before lips closed against me. Never met
one face I couldn’t see myself loving, given enough time
& champagne. Never met someone I wouldn’t want to split
a bottle of champagne with because I love drinking alone. Lost
my wallet in my own pants, got glad to find it again in a coat
at a stranger’s house who was also me, also cold. Met the devil
in an alley, linked arms with her, walked home through snow.
Saw only one set of footprints behind us but they were crusted
purple. Listed heavy toward my bed, laid down between bodies
to make three of us, felt lips all over mine, reached my arms side to side
& hugged the mattress. Only my breath hung in the air,
my air, filled with crystals in the frozen night.
Sonnet With Terry Crews’ Favorite Emerson Quote,
As Revealed on Hot Ones
I am a friend of god. If god has her pals over, she calls me up,
says, I won't have my work manifested by no cowards. Shucks,
I say, flattered & flabbergasted as hell because she is a god who
might like-like me, finally, might press her fiery thumb up onto
my temple & whisper make yourself at home, could share wine
before it's back to water & murmur, oh my me, look at the time,
when she wants me to suggest I stay over. God has guest rooms
like you wouldn't believe (though you're supposed to) & gloom
is the cloud she swept from her house. I saw her tip that old dust
pan right into the trash before heavenly collection. Forsaken rust
spilled from that scoop like ladybugs & red giants. I knew home
was wherever she set her cleaning sights on, even if it's my own
dirtied-up guts. She could scrape me clean with her long tooth,
snagged along my skin as fishing line to hook her ordered truth.
Mea Culpa for an Anti-Imperialist
When it was placed in front of me as a warning, I shied
away from a basket of bread & roses. I thought too much
about making flour. The cake became impossible.
I painted a landscape with buildings for rituals neither counter to
nor wholly aligned with what I really believe. I hid myself behind
that which would devour me given the chance. At every turn,
I gave it more tooth-sized openings in my skin.
I became too frightened for the safety of my garden; I stopped
believing in factory workers. I forgot the plodding stitches
holding my sock together, making my real pocket.
I forgot to feed fascists to alligators until I failed
even the alligators & I did all this willingly
when I cracked any lensed book by its spine on the hillside
dreaming of severing skull from its seat if only money & love
of money bloomed in the head.
Self Portrait With No Children
Where you peer in & see something (is it a coin?
a noose or a sickle? is it a model ship boasting a hull
you long to head up? do you tongue the bottle it sails in?),
I look down & see nothing (if nothing was a leg
for standing on, if lack could be wrapped around bone
& gnawed on, if gnawing filled the mouth or greased the chin).
Where you see me (hobby horse & hour organizer, pantry
expert, a series of aprons tied over each other & every string
in hangman’s knots, calendar steady as a sundial) & see nothing,
I see connection (call it lightning, call it spun web, call it a tag on an atom
of oxygen & track it through a hundred mouths before releasing it to rewild
a tree, its dance changing as it changes) threatening to suffer everything.
David Eileen lives in the mountains of Virginia. Their writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Diagram, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Best of the Net, among others, with more shared at www.david-eileen.com. A big advocate for talking to your neighbors; their work & letters are concerned with interconnectedness, lineage, queer resilience, labor rights, solidarity, & care for our planet. They would love to talk to you.
Copyright © 2026 by David Eileen, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
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