Up late watching slug porn, you confess
you had a boyfriend who could spin you
like that, slug grace and slug ballet—we don't
touch the topic of slime—and those eyes

dangling from tentacle tips must be a
kind of love or lust, sighting farther and
nearer all at once. (But are those eyes?)
Slug sublimity suggests love's a drag,

touch that lingers and leaves a wet trail of
memory and... What did we do before
YouTube? Boob tube. Boobs we have none; slugs,
of course, don't care, can't tell girl from boy,

(being, you know, hermaphrodites), and only
want flesh to fly. Forget their infamous
languor—here's litheness in loving, buoyant
miracles of want, one slug spiraling

on the axis of another like a globe
slapped by an insolent hand. Neither old
nor young, we're familiar with sluggishness,
too tired to explain why nothing makes us

spin like that: a-swirl, a pirouette, a gyre!
It's either fucking or marriage, I say,
saying more than I mean. Why can't lust be
love and love be lust? you're always asking,

even now as the slugs begin their sluggish
withdrawal—each complete in love and lust;
each mother and father to what they've made
together; each alone, content, and free.