Submit

show us your work

Subscribe

to the publication

ProForma

enter contest

Submit

show us your work

Subscribe

to the publication

ProForma

enter contest

POETRY

Sometimes I Am Too Impatient for Poetry and Also for Sex

J. Bailey Hutchinson

which isn’t to say I’d call a bundle of floss-knotted kindling what needs
retrieval from beneath the house just that it takes a long time to untie
anything with teeth and I am a busy woman my friend says what
she likes most is the afterward the peeling apart like a label
lifted from a jam jar but given the empty guest room its sun-
warmed daybed I often think there are thirteen nails to be
plucked from the porch presently given the woeful
glance at my drinking lip I think I have not read
as many books as is expected of my profession
when a lover wants to court the mango shape
of my breast I think well sure but and some-
times beneath a waistband all I smell
is boiled water in a mouth all I taste
is mouth is it that the bradford pear
stinks like someone spent or is it
that we want too much to taste
in every jut and shudder a
thousand fragrant flower-
ings I read online that
fruit doesn’t sweeten
only loses acid as if
a bowl of mulling
peaches learnt
sugar at birth
as if it doesn’t
gather but
gives
up—
Love,
it is not
that I do not like
it. It is only that I forget
I deserve the time. Slow. Touch.
I am coming around to it. This poem
is as good a start as any. Read it. With me.
In the bed. I will. With you. Become a sugaring team of insides.

Author Photo for J. Bailey Hutchinson
Photo Credit: Petra Lee
(Photo Credit: Petra Lee)

J. Bailey Hutchinson is a poet from Memphis, Tennessee. Her debut collection, Gut, won the 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize. She is an associate editor at Milkweed Editions, and her work can be found in Muzzle Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ninth Letter, and more. A complete list of her work can be found at jbaileyhutchinson.com

More Poetry

Issue 17

We Open on a Field

Michaela Brown is a Midwest transplant currently teaching English in Vigo, Spain. She is the first place recipient of the 2020 Marjorie Stover Short Story Prize and has previously been published in Unstamatic Magazine, Gone Lawn, The Daily Drunk, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @mikienbrown.

Read More »
Issue 17

Parable of Sparrow and Crocodile

Originally from the DC area, Matthew Moniz has poems appearing in or forthcoming from The Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, Crab Orchard Review, Meridian, Tupelo Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, and minnesota review. His work has been awarded Poetry by the Sea’s Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest prize and the SCMLA Poetry Prize.

Read More »
Issue 17

MY GRANDMOTHER AFTER KOREA

Arah Ko is a writer from Hawai’i and the author of Brine Orchid (YesYes Books 2025) and Animal Logic (Bull City Press 2025). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Arah edits at Surging Tide Magazine and is pursuing her Ph.D. in English at the University of Cincinnati. Catch her at arahko.com.

Read More »

More Poetry

We Open on a Field

Michaela Brown is a Midwest transplant currently teaching English in Vigo, Spain. She is the first place recipient of the 2020 Marjorie Stover Short Story Prize and has previously been published in Unstamatic Magazine, Gone Lawn, The Daily Drunk, and elsewhere. You can find her on Twitter @mikienbrown.

Read More »

Parable of Sparrow and Crocodile

Originally from the DC area, Matthew Moniz has poems appearing in or forthcoming from The Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, Crab Orchard Review, Meridian, Tupelo Quarterly, Fourteen Hills, and minnesota review. His work has been awarded Poetry by the Sea’s Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Crown Contest prize and the SCMLA Poetry Prize.

Read More »

MY GRANDMOTHER AFTER KOREA

Arah Ko is a writer from Hawai’i and the author of Brine Orchid (YesYes Books 2025) and Animal Logic (Bull City Press 2025). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, and elsewhere. Arah edits at Surging Tide Magazine and is pursuing her Ph.D. in English at the University of Cincinnati. Catch her at arahko.com.

Read More »

One Winter in Vermont

Emily Light is a poet, educator, and mother living in northern New Jersey. Her poetry can be found in such journals as Inch, Salt Hill, Cherry Tree, Cumberland River Review, and RHINO, among others.

Read More »