Susannah Betts
A LITTLE HANDSY

whisper: you’re my Jurassic juice
when you suck my
neck and that will be the word
and the word will be With God
and on the third date
we will with hesitant hands

like just-pubescent lesbians, hands
stained of bleeding polish, juiceboxes
sucked dry, save the date,
my invitation, my
God,
the words
birthday party, the words
hope you’ll come, translated through hand
in hair, eyes to God’s
kingdom and heaven-sent nectar
all mine.
On the third date
presunrise and pre-carbon-dated
light fall and swell the word
(hopeful you meant it) my
sense dulled by improper forging, lubrication
dripping through cracks in the warriors’ hall, fists
clenching drinks, where toasts to Valhalla and prayers to God
Above and God Below and Gods
as versatile as army knives woo + crush + date
+ shag + marry + I’d like a glass of juice
while we’re keeping our words
as personal use, as picking at hangnails, as quivering handjobs
as fingers on clits, as my favorite touch, as my

favorite flick, as my
best sensation, as my comfort inn, as god
is my witness, as I wish for handsome
and handmaiden kingdoms and evergreen landscapes and trees laden with figs
and waiting for words
that are never arriving. whisper: I am arriving

and like first soprano hitting her note
you, my last master, drip honey in praise

Susannah Betts is a writer, artist and graduate student living in Rochester, N.Y. She grew up in Bowie, Md. and graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in physics in 2015. She likes disrupting the gender binary and the stigma surrounding female and non-binary sexual pleasure in her work. She currently serves as the fiction editor of the online intersectional feminist literary magazine The Fem and has been published in some various places that you can find listed here: susannah-one-summer.tumblr.com/published.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #12.