Bentyl by Eric Tran


can...alleviate the severe gastrointestinal symptoms 

of opiate withdrawal 

– American Addiction Centers

What body weighs when it wants.
Swell, we say. How full slants

to fool. How a body empties
and still sings like a drum

or a teething beast. 
At our core, we want

a day free of wanting. 
I know I demanded your bitterness 

splashed across my tongue.
Finger beds white

and wet, desperate for after
-math. To cum 

is to grip upon
relief. Unload me

like a gun. Let the sky
crack with lightning.

Eric Tran is a queer Vietnamese poet and the author of Mouth, Sugar, and Smoke (Diode Editions, forthcoming 2022) and The Gutter Spread Guide to Prayer (Autumn House Press). He serves as an associate editor for Orison Press and a poetry reader for the Los Angeles Review.   He has received awards and recognition from Prairie Schooner, New Delta Review, Best of the Net, and others. His work appears in RHINO, 32 Poems, the Missouri Review and elsewhere. He is a resident physician in psychiatry in Asheville, NC.