I’m on fire and
with your pale lips you’re talking of soft alley sex,
the rattle your knuckles make, of bones breaking.
You’re watching it transpire
but with all your talking
the sound is consumed like a fever.
What’s driving you tonight?
It’s not just kiddie play.
As the greatest people are,
I’m on fire.

You lay still, are open.
I could transpire
While you’re watching on.
Is dark fire what’s driving you?
To taste the fire is to taste
the commotion of your sex.
You transpire like sex, don’t you?

A day on they’re dying but
What’s forever to them?
We’re the ones sex has consumed.
I just know it feels the greatest.
Oh, your head: it’s on fire.

Laying where the greatest sex is,
we’re consumed, dying.
It is hot.

 

Source Text: Kings of Leon, “Sex on Fire”.

Ross McCleary is from Edinburgh. He was born 9 months after Jorge Luis Borges died. He has a novella being published in July through Maudlin House.