The Flesh Between Us

Eroticism cut from classical mythology, ritual, and intimacy  
In The Flesh Between Us the speaker explores our connections to each other, whether they be lovely or painful, static or constantly shifting, or, above all, unavoidable and necessary. Intensely and unapologetically homoerotic in content and theme, The Flesh Between Us sensuously conducts the meetings between strangers, between lovers, between friends and family, between eater and eaten, between the soul and the body that contains it. Pushing the boundaries of what has been traditionally acceptable for gay and erotic content and themes, the poems adapt persona, Greek mythology, Judaism, and classic poetic forms to interrogate the speaker’s relationship to god and faith, to love and sex, to mother and father. 
 
Stark and mythical, the imagery draws from the language of animals and nature. Episodes of kink tangle with creatures of forests and lore. In this tumult, the lines of poetry keep a sense of boundary and distance by the seeming incompatibility of their subjects: daybreak and dissection, human and insect, worship and reality. The touch of irreconcilable bodies, in Adkisson’s language, intimates the precise moment of love. The idea of love moves viscerally through rib, lung, throat, and mouth. The poems show how flesh opens in so many ways, in prayers, in bleeds, in ruts. The flesh, opened, begins to swell. If there is guilt in this, Adkisson’s poems refuse the placid satisfaction of confession. Whatever attachments the reader dares to draw must be made with blade or tongue. The reader must commit to the potential violence narrated by these poems.
 

In The Flesh Between Us the speaker explores our connections to each other, whether they be lovely or painful, static or constantly shifting, or, above all, unavoidable and necessary.

Tory Adkisson’s work has been featured in anthologies such as Best New Poets and Queer Nature. His poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, the Adroit Journal, Los Angeles Review, Boston Review, and Cimarron Review. 

HOMOSEXUALITY Desire, I drape over my chest
so you know what flag I bear,
what nation I want to land on
when the rescue workers
& newscasters have pulled me
from the dark, allowing me to
rinse my foliate feathers, shed
my oily skin—& with wings
steeped in fire, they won’t be able
to look at me—the light would burn
pinholes in their pupils—
& what they will ask as they kneel
is How long does the bridge runin your heart, how deliberatelydark is the birdcage. I will give them
an answer & after they’ve kissed
my feet, I will give them a pair
of sunglasses, so when I sit down
to eat they’ll be able to see clear
through my throat to the window
behind it & wait their turn to
bring a knife & fork to the table.
POST-MORTEM AUBADE The scalpel carves out
a sliver of bone where the humerus
hollows into the shoulder
blade. Be careful removing
soft tissue—the cartilage & keel,
the lungs branching like cedars
down the trunk of the sternum.
When you pull the brain out, wrench it
softly so the stem, like an umbilical
cord, comes with it. Remove
one wing, then the other. Splay them
on the table & take notes on proportion, on arc—
how crow-like they are, how they seem
capable of flight in only the most dire
circumstances. The only conclusion
you can draw at this time is the cause
of death was exposure. When you’re finished
allowing your gloves to plummet
from your hands like robin’s
eggs, don’t hesitate to break
the halo: another word for wish
-bone, another word for worry.
PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER AS THE TROJAN HORSE Say father, father & listen for war. Stay
quiet and listen for a drum
beat, the same as the heart of war.
The breath of men is a reckless sound
that splinters in the throat. Dad drinks
a little then a little more, and I wait and I wait.
When the Greeks leave they leave their shadows
burned into the walls, their ships
hurtling away from the coast
like a wake of vultures toward another
carcass that must be pillaged.
All it took to sack the city of Troy
was letting the wrong horse into its stables.
And me? I was the poor fool who listened
against the slats of his wooden
flank for a sound like love
and always let him in.

“Tory Adkisson’s poems are fervent, vulnerable. He illuminates the ‘wilderness of flesh’ that divides and connects us. I found myself leaning closer to his lyricism, his courage, his inventiveness. The Flesh Between Us is a powerful debut, rich with language that startles, lingers.”—Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine   
“Adkisson’s stunning debut examines relationships in all their forms—familial, romantic, literary, mythic, and erotic. As the title The Flesh Between Us so powerfully suggests, Adkisson looks at connection and its limitations, studying the difference between intimacy and attachment through the touchstone of flesh. These deeply sensual poems rove through an evolving pantheon of gods ‘thriving on quiet moments of violence’ that seem natural and tender despite their darkness. Adkisson lets readers revel in the sumptuous pleasures of his lines but recognizes each of these intimacies comes with an inevitable departure that is, yes, cruel, but also sweet. These losses are like this book: unforgettable.”—Traci Brimhall, author of Rookery and Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod  
“Adkisson is a classical poet with a hard style. He can be both funny and dark. I admire his emotionalism when writing about love, lost love and the dangers of loving. His poems mix autobiography with myth as he tries to make sense of the chaos around him. His poems have backbone, and I admire this, too.”—Henri Cole, author of Blizzard and Orphic Paris “In finely tuned portraits, aubades and anecdotes, Adkisson precisely examines queer love and the body, allowing the human enterprise its adjacency to a wilder world—animal, vegetal and sexual. He assembles, in essence, a poetry bestiary, where all of our senses are heightened, alert to both danger and ecstasy. Reading The Flesh Between Us, I couldn’t help but think of tide pools teeming with life, entire redolent worlds in which the intimacy and industry of living and dying are experienced in a brief bright moment of awe.”—Kathy Fagan, author of Sycamore "Tory Adkisson’s The Flesh Between Uscharts the mythic within the body itself, revealing a landscape of intimacy made of bone and muscle and blood, with verses meant to create “a new/ species of mystery: hybrid forms/ born to be sentient buzzing.” These are poems of longing, poems that examine the self within a dialogue of flesh, poems that explore the encounter, where “the kink of your tongue/ will always be like a word// of prayer against my palate.” With The Flesh Between Us, Adkisson lays bare the love and loss held within the winged form of the human body."—Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet “Tory Adkisson’s poems are fervent, vulnerable. He illuminates the ‘wilderness of flesh’ that divides and connects us. I found myself leaning closer to his lyricism, his courage, his inventiveness. The Flesh Between Us is a powerful debut, rich with language that startles, lingers.”—Eduardo C. Corral, author of Guillotine!  
“Adkisson’s stunning debut examines relationships in all their forms—familial, romantic, literary, mythic, and erotic. As the title The Flesh Between Us so powerfully suggests, Adkisson looks at connection and its limitations, studying the difference between intimacy and attachment through the touchstone of flesh. These deeply sensual poems rove through an evolving pantheon of gods ‘thriving on quiet moments of violence’ that seem natural and tender despite their darkness. Adkisson lets readers revel in the sumptuous pleasures of his lines but recognizes each of these intimacies comes with an inevitable departure that is, yes, cruel, but also sweet. These losses are like this book: unforgettable.”—Traci Brimhall, author of Rookery and Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod  
“Adkisson is a classical poet with a hard style. He can be both funny and dark. I admire his emotionalism when writing about love, lost love and the dangers of loving. His poems mix autobiography with myth as he tries to make sense of the chaos around him. His poems have backbone, and I admire this, too.”—Henri Cole, author of Blizzard and Orphic Paris “In finely tuned portraits, aubades and anecdotes, Adkisson precisely examines queer love and the body, allowing the human enterprise its adjacency to a wilder world—animal, vegetal and sexual. He assembles, in essence, a poetry bestiary, where all of our senses are heightened, alert to both danger and ecstasy. Reading The Flesh Between Us, I couldn’t help but think of tide pools teeming with life, entire redolent worlds in which the intimacy and industry of living and dying are experienced in a brief bright moment of awe.”—Kathy Fagan, author of Sycamore "Tory Adkisson’s The Flesh Between Uscharts the mythic within the body itself, revealing a landscape of intimacy made of bone and muscle and blood, with verses meant to create “a new/ species of mystery: hybrid forms/ born to be sentient buzzing.” These are poems of longing, poems that examine the self within a dialogue of flesh, poems that explore the encounter, where “the kink of your tongue/ will always be like a word// of prayer against my palate.” With The Flesh Between Us, Adkisson lays bare the love and loss held within the winged form of the human body."—Brian Turner, author of Here, Bullet