Three Honeys
1. Skin Electric
how your skin is electric:
unfathomably smooth sheens of water: pure upon my captured hands
my unholy lips sube sube in my mouth: I drink adrift in an embodiment
of grace
and I will be the earth you love:
each texture of a poet folded in poised prayers: each ripple
moving every stream: each murmur of a psalm across undulating
unwoundings
heaven is revealed in braided sighs:
lashing my face as rain: salt nectar decorates my throat as manna tasting
me: rolling in blissed reveries long after you came: and thanked
and left
(sube sube : Japanese: すべすべ ‘smooth, silky (of skin), sliding, slipping (motion)’)2. A Fleet
on this shrouded roof: there stands
a man, a vent of glass, a span
one hand’s breadth away from
becoming an eagle: he fleets
and smokes, leaps to the hills, and I,
behind my night train’s window
dream of that same glazed stare,
track his flight from rail to ridge
to heights: eyes leap as well into
his mists: can’t help but follow3. Ryan’s Glisky
first hungry
later fulfilled
this was after I lied said my name was Jack until those mydriatic
pupils those discerning glances jailed me as joyfully as your hands described
my curves and angles as if drawing them for the first time and later
now it’s your turn to be captured into my skin the rough warming of your
palms your sinuous fingers dreaming dendritic slid over me like I am
connected to someone again all the while I fell and I fell through
oceans of your eyes in shadow
in moonlight as you played me to
silence: I knew exactly
what you were thinking
Glisky: Cumbrian dialect word: shining, shimmering; glowing (as of the sky after rain)One Yeek
1. Character Sets
confused alpha boys, these wolf cubs
who imposture the tops of primate trees:
ask me where upon their earth
I might belong
Egyptian hieroglyph: eye of Horus
Chinese characters for: wilderness unbound
cuneiform strike: star reaches out
for Inanna
Mayan murmur for jaguar,
chanul stirs deep in my dappled forest glades,
treads potency in alluvial muds
don’t give me
a limiting twenty-four A to Ω
then tell me this is human life:
I’ll run through my own
myriads
thousands-character sets
which laugh at you, so nakedly, for failing:
for setting yourselves up as kings
of such smallness
(chanul : Tzotzil Maya: ‘a double soul in the form of a spirit animal, living far away,
who feels what its human counterpart feels, and dies when they die’About the Author
Bruce Rimell is an outsider poet and visual artist, whose work encounters animistic psychogeographies, gay/Queer sexual dynamics, and living with ADHD in a neuronormative world. His work is mostly narrative, but often sits far from the zeitgeist.
Mostly self-published, he is currently exploring forays into the mainstream: ‘Echoes For Aphrodite’, a poetic travelogue to the Greek island of Milos, was shortlisted for the 2024 International Poetry Book Award: two more collections were longlisted in the 2025 iteration of this prize. ‘Deo Mithrae’, a micro-chapbook, was also published by the Braag in January 2025.
Explore Bruce’s poetry on his website, and follow him on Instagram (@shirtlesspoet) for more.
That’s all for this week. With mischief,