The Southampton Review

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Tender

In zombie movies there’s always a couple who fuck 
one last time, drink some wine and just give up.
This is the only reason I can think of 
to fall in love again. On first dates men often ask
how you would rather die,

I kid you not, drowning or fire. 
They want to know my body even as it’s destroyed
by my imagination. The world is burning 
and we can’t stop saying the word tender.
It’s the only language left for flesh, for helplessness, 

the desire to be kind, etc. It’s the secret name 
of every shirtless photo sent me 
from the gym bathroom, clattering with light. 
The sloppy calligraphy of the ten point buck half-velveted 
and hoisted for the camera 

on their dating profiles. Strop of tongue.
I want to be touched like the belly wants meat 
or pills, some new combination of words. 
On first dates I always make sure to say 
I have a lazy left eye. They rub their thumbs

against my thigh—a scratch-off ticket.
They want to know my body as it loosens its leash. 
Baby teeth unhooked in their holsters. 
Slack bight of muscle in the face, pendant chain 
still tangled in my hair when I turn on the bathroom light.

In movies  there’s always one gutsy little zombie 
dragging herself forward by the elbows, 
as if I would do anything undead but lie in bed  
watching reality dating shows and gnawing off my own hand. 
In this episode the man is eating great platters of cold cuts, 

in this one the women are crying 
in the Badlands, their hairdos ruined 
and revealing scalp. They have the hacksaw voices 
of sorority sisters and flames taking a house 
to the studs. There’s a virgin there’s a widow a zombie 

in paste jewelry shoving rose petals in her jaw. 
They keep rasping tender tender tender
but its been dubbed  
into a series of questions and responses 
about what they fear most.  


H.R. WEBSTER’s poetry has appeared in Ecotone, Massachusetts Review, Ninth Letter, 32Poems, and Black Warrior Review. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center, The Vermont Studio Center, and the Helen Zell Writers' Program. She currently serves as managing editor at the Michigan Quarterly Review. You can find her online at hrwebster.com and on Instagram at @hrweb