an unfortunate analogy

I think last night I caught a glimpse into your soul
in the same, unlucky way strangers catch a glimpse
of you through the gaps in the doors of public
restrooms in America. It was pure, unadulterated
panic in your eyes when our eyes met through
the metal door, and like the panic that sets in when
someone knocks on the doors of public restrooms
in America, you said “I’m in here” as if that would
solve any problems at all. I know this might be
crude, to compare your soul to public restrooms
in America but until you open up it’s the only
analogy I have available so it will have to do.

amateur zoologist

I want to get to a point in my life where I won’t have to look up
animals to describe her, I’ll have read enough zoology to know
that if I say she is just like a frog wearing spectacles
I should describe her with clammy skin and the ability
to breathe underwater for extended periods of time
or to describe her as more of a field mouse who’s so warm
and elusive and tiny and sweet, taking naps in the heads
of flowers, bees knocking on her door to tell her she can’t
sleep there. Or if I describe her like a carrion crow,
feeding on the leftover remains of my 400 previously
discarded poems that she’s only doing it out of necessity.
Although it might not matter how accurately I describe
the animal she is or whether or not
she wears glasses because you understand what I mean
when I say she’s just a kangaroo carrying around
my soul inside her flappy little pouch, as she jumps around
and shakes all my insides up until I can’t see straight.
Though not even that can really do her justice, there’s something else, too.
I love her in a million different ways and there is an infinite
possibility of animals she could be, I’ll just need to study up to properly express my love.
I just want to get to the point in my life where I can recall exactly
what a blue-footed booby is without using reference material because
who knows? she might be a marine bird native to subtropical
and tropical regions of the eastern Pacific Ocean
and is easily recognizable by her distinctive bright blue feet,
which is a sexually selected trait and a product of her diet
and if she is I want to be able to tell her that.

————

Corey Bryan is a student at Georgia State University. He lives with his clowder of cats (the best to ever do it) and girlfriend in Atlanta, Georgia. He is currently writing daily poetry prompts with a friend of his at poetryispretentious.com. He is published at the Empyrean Lit Magazine and Papers Publishing and has six poems forthcoming at A Door is a Jar, Deep South Mag, and the Seventh Quarry Press.