Andi Talarico: I Want Everything

I want you to Read this Very Slowly, and then I want you to Read it Again

“I want everything.” – Anne Carson, Decreation

I want to forgive my body its gaping appetite

I want permission to sample, inhale, consume

I want, now, to be a cacophony of pleas, a full round of echoing ache,

to see your mouth a great O of understanding

I want to hold you for so long that my arms forget arms,

I want you to hold me longer yet,

so long that your body forgets it is a body

I want my empty places filled in, pushed against

I want the metaphors of plow and field to pale against this true thing, this very real fuck of spit and gasp and hair and thrum

I want to not call it primal

I want it titled and plumed

I want it high and low

how Mistress is both ordained woman of the house

and the fucked lover on the side

Make me each, give me all, adoring scorn,

I want everything.

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Andi Talarico is a Brooklyn-based writer and reader. She’s the curator and host of At the Inkwell NYC, an international reading series whose New York branch meets at KGB Bar. She’s taught poetry in classrooms as a rostered artist, and acted as coach and judge for Poetry Out Loud. In 2003, Paperkite Press published her chapbook, Spinning with the Tornado, and Swandive Publishing included her in the 2014 anthology, Everyday Escape Poems. She also penned a literary arts column for Electric City magazine for several years. When she’s not working with stationery company Baron Fig, she can be found reading tarot cards, supporting independent bookstores, and searching for the best oyster Happy Hour in NYC.