Stone Soup Servings is a regular series for Oddball Magazine that features upcoming performers at Stone Soup Poetry, the long-running spoken word venue in the Boston area that has recently partnered with Oddball Magazine. Stone Soup Poetry meets from 8-10 p.m. every Monday at the Out of The Blue Art Gallery at 106 Prospect Street with an open mike sign-up at 7:30 p.m.

This Monday, Stone Soup is pleased to begin the first in a series of features introducing a member of the Flatline Poetry group. The series will ideally continue every last Monday of the month for the next three months before presenting the entire group for a finale in October. The first of these features is Lewis Morgan, whose work can be read below.

 

Crumbs

Cynicism is a blanket,
arctic, prickled with rusty nails,
piercing
paper-thin skin,
wounds most comforting.
Lips savor the flavor
of crumbs
left from
ex-lovers.
Follow them, and you’ll find…

nothing.

When did I become
satisfied with just crumbs?

When did pleasure begin
to be synonymous with friction?
Bodies collide clumsily.
Is the collision ever enough?

Does it stop there?

Rivers of spit cascade
into each others mouths
as we kiss.
Is this
the only thing we ever shared?

The grey of my love life
splinters into
black
and
white
perfect when
curled fingers thrust into lips
not used for speaking
but speaks enough
in its wetness.

Legs shiver.
Thighs tighten.
She fights the urge to
release a scream buried
deep within herself.
Reducing it to a whimper,
she looks at me as if to
look through me.

My existence sits numb to
her gaze as her tongue
caresses and journeys down
thick
black
surface
of…

My name is anonymous to her.
Her tongue savored the flavor of
crumbs.
Not me.

Cynicism is a blanket
wrapped around our naked bodies.
We are clothed with apologies
to ourselves, yet we
can’t stand to look at the
crumbs we savored.

These crumbs leave us
empty.

When it’s over, the only feeling
real enough to be called
“a feeling”
is the itch on our skin,
but I guess that sin
will do that.

I drag my sin
like a disease
on a
leash,
on a search for wanting…
for needing…
for desperate…
comparing scars
cloaked under icy
moral codes thawing into
beads of sweat on my torso.

And, when it dries,
my regret
remains.

Isn’t sex
ever the same from
person
to
person?

Vagina and penis without
faces, or
names, or
emotions.
Meaning that our bond is
meaningless.

My penis is a tool.
An addict to power,
and a king to no one
but my right hand.

Cynicism is a blanket.
A lover most fickle.
The warmest comfort
we will ever freeze to death
inside of. When I cum
inside you, when you cuddle
next to me,
we’ll cover our shame
with this blanket.

Reveling in the flavor, yet
empty from the nothing,
we’ll sleep under this blanket.
Together.
And separate.