And I know they be horny

The dead be fucking down there
packed in the dirt like a gay club.

They wear nothing but the occasional scrap of palm leaves
laced with their burial clothes
and dyed with blackberry juice-

and they look so sexy;
back in their prime after digging
through the dirt so long

they got that smell that could make you gag
if you aren’t horny for it; post-gym
post-dead post-dig hard on, yes

a patch of flowers is probably the remnants
of an orgy in the rain. The proof is in the peace
lily’s, the blue-ridge mountains, the ocean-

The whole world is wet for a reason.
I mean, how many had to hold it inside them
until they could release it in the dirt?

Groundwater as cum. Bones as sex toys.
How many died before fucking
because it was illegal? or deadly? or both?

The closest they got to touch on Earth the stitching
of their t-shirt to another dead’s t-shirt
on a quilt. The hands that stitched them.

Or the hands of fathers and mothers and brothers
uncles and school bullies and strangers
police and police and pastors

that killed them
in places where death isn’t real
if you can’t hear it-

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Blaine Purcell is a Black, Queer writer from Greensboro, North Carolina. They are currently studying poetry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.