Caylin Capra-Thomas

Hot Date

I cut out the days from the calendar.

They are cells, they are pills. They are weakened by saliva.
I licked their locks. I swallowed my own birthday.

It tasted like nothing. Like not being born—
that kind of nothing. Never.

As a girl, I cut women’s figures from clothing catalogues,
glued them to cardboard to buttress their shapes.

I named each one Janice. Slid their glossy bodies
all over one another: How is it? How’s that?

Janus dissolving inside of us. God. It is so good.

Caylin Capra-Thomas’s second chapbook, Inside My Electric City, is due out later this year from YesYes Books. Her poems have appeared or will soon in Crazyhorse, Salt Hill, Ninth Letter, The Journal, Willow Springs, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction will appear in the fall issue of Yemassee, where it won the 2016 Nonfiction Prize. She lives, for now, in Missoula, Montana, and online at caylincaprathomas.com.