BLACK MARKET LIT
About Dominick Duda.
Cancer
When he's not holding unlit cigarettes to seem edgy, DOMINICK DUDA spends his time writing poems that are the twisted love children of contemporary and slam poetry. His poems "The Giver" and "Cancer" are no exception. After graduating from Baldwin Wallace University in two years, he plans to move to New York and pursue an MFA in Poetry while also becoming a successful slam poet.
One time Rachel McKibbens tweeted at him that they should buy matching bow ties for the release of her new book of poetry and he plans to hold her to it. Dominick hopes to live long enough to see Fergie release a second solo album. Currently, he is putting together a manuscript of poetry to submit to Write Bloody Publishing next April.
You are a shot of poison,
and everybody knows that one
shot leads to two, three, four.
The fireball spiraling down
my throat becomes a cold tumor,
a cancerous seed blooming
into rotted branches that
wrap around my bones
like boa constrictors.
I am a garden overgrown
with the thought of you.
The doctor counted each
cold seed, gave me a diagnosis:
Stage One: fantasizing the ways
we could fuck in the shower.
Stage Two: waiting for the
confession of love you will never give.
Stage Three: folding my heart
like origami suicide.
Stage Four: admitting to myself
that I keep a lit candle for you,
a lighthouse to guide your heart
out of the turning tides of your mind.
I know that I should stop
savoring your toxic burn,
stop bloating my tongue with tumors
at the deliberate mention of you.
We are gasoline bodies
rolling downhill and I am
a sadomasochist at heart, dear.
For every tumor that withers
from the chemo of your absence,
a new one is grows from
the poison of resistance.
The doctor tells me I
should be dead.
He doesn’t know that
I’ve already called this
coffin my home,
that I’ve preserved
my body with your indifference.
He drops his voice
so low that I can barely
hear it, even with my
ear pushed against the
coffin lid.
Stage Five: living as
though my body is torn
in two, the other half
buried beneath your sheets.
The Giver
My last boyfriend told me that
he would give me the world if he could.
I think I’d settle for a jar of sand.
Instead of giving me the world
I want my lover to fashion his fingers
into needles, buy the best thread he can afford,
and sew me back together in
the places only he is meant to touch.