Suck
Cyril Wong
Why do we keep dining on—
gorging, wetly vulnerable, open-
throated—the low-hanging
fruit of our common—presumably,
unfailingly fundamental—
humanity, not pausing for even
hydration or air, as if to seal
the deal—the wound, the source
of every dissatisfaction—Edenic
fruit which ripens the moment
we take it in our mouths and
suckle, draw from, swallow—
this metaphor hardens, softens,
hardens again—as it vibrates,
trembles, eases its load only to
gather it back again—shaking
from the unshakeable permanence
of our condition, our widening
to take it all in, overused muscles
in the jaw tightening—never
snapping, slackening, taut—
as if heaven and hell were one
and the same non-duality
we misunderstood for all our
animal life, a totality of existence
in this distended missile of meat
blowing up against the palate—
uvula, this tongue’s generous
tilt for gasping spaciousness—
we as one body absorbing
itself into itself, letting itself go
again in one continuous, pulsing
samsara of hunger, thirst—love, self-
loathing lathed to feel like love—
surrender, submission, simultaneous
domination, edging control, strategic
adherence, as if this was how we had
designed desire—we the master
or mistress, the lock and key, not
merely the lock each key slides into—
twisting, thrusting, invading—
before writhing to pull out, faltering,
failing, remanded, tortured—
turning to keep turning in every
wrongful, clockwise, anti-clockwise
direction—our burden to unlock
nothing as well as everything—nothing
more to be mastered from release,
nothing beyond this epithalamium
for skull and glans rocketing
across a history of abuse, maybe,
or atavistic chemical inclinations
tying us down to this wish for tying
back to meat—shaft, frenulum,
apex to urethral meatus—without
end, unending, gagging, gagged
for what seeps through—the world
discharging what we asked and begged
for—still not what we wanted,
not quite—not slowing or stopping
until salt gushes to sweetness carpeting
floors of our cheeks—oneness,
tenderness, surely—no more departure
or abandonment, no separation
from what belongs, what remains
ours to keep or choke on, enriching
intestinal juices to thicken blood,
enter heart—part of us, if not
in spirit, at least in flesh—to dignify this
unshakeable body breaking—peeling,
falling and still falling—apart
from what it knows it cannot hold.
Cyril Wong is a poet and fictionist in Singapore. His last book was Infinity Diary, published by Seagull Books in 2020.