KELLI ANNE NOFTLE

Penis Fencing
     Each flatworm tries to pierce the skin of the other by using one of its penises. Mating is a fight because the
     worm that assumes the female role then must expend considerable energy caring for the developing eggs.

Coming at this with a foil, poised darling, perched
along the high reef’s pinnacle. Self-awareness is severe.

I read your biography. I learned everything about you from the internet.

Who can get whose hand around your throat, de facto male, de facto female?
Like the bathroom photo uploaded to the worldwide supermarket bag.

The flatworms do it because they have to. Watch them swing and slit the most private wound of all. You say rapier because it is the French word for dagger. I say come at me
with the irony in your fist.

I read your profile. I know who you were fucking last night.

They do it because they have to. Call it survival, but one of the worms must lose, inevitable
pregnant hiss of disappointment.

One of us must waste our lives caring for the sting.