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.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“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
“At the core of
The Flesh Between Us, then—and one begins to appreciate, perhaps, the many resonances of that title—lies a profound mystery, that paradox that exists in the linkage between love and sexuality. These are ambitious ideas, but Adkisson handles them with great verve, thinking through imagery in sophisticated ways.”—Preposition
About the Author
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.
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 run in your heart, how deliberately dark 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
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