fast yearning bursts
by Italo Ferrante
my love is so big / it could bend light / it could revamp the shrivelled husk
of a dead star / it’s the reason why protons stick together / it’s the opposite of discrete
packets of energy / I could move to a blue planet / I could live in a lake on an island
in a lake on an island / as long as you’re there / my love would craft moonettes / in vain
you like the undersea / better than my sandpaper tongue / my love exists / in a tense
of probability / past, perfect & continuous / you may call it quantum entanglement
/ or some spooky action at a distance / like licking the tip of your nose / inside
a quarantine station / the impossibility of knocking / my hands into yours / leaves me
crisscrossed by railway lines / my atoms jump from trains in motion / I beg you to shoot
my particles through a slit window / I ask you to play / husband & wife with me /
to give me a monkey scrub / if I tease you like honey / curling back on itself /
please stop looking / for ways to outgrow me / you’re the reason why /
the earth will run out of auroras / squint at the canyon-shaped hole / my love has
etched on the sun / it’s for you / the lover I’ve never had
Italo Ferrante (he/him) is a queer poet who earned a BA in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Warwick. To date, his work has been selected for publication by Poetry Salzburg, Impossible Archetype, Cardiff Review, Sage Cigarettes, Inflections Magazine, Lighthouse, and Orchard Lea Press.