Poems by Mickie Kennedy
The Pact, 1994
I feared AIDS, and Cindy feared
being alone, so we forged a compromise.
I cooked, she cleaned, we watched movies
from Blockbuster and read poetry to each other.
On occasion, we coaxed orgasms
with our mouths and hands, never fucking.
She couldn’t: a birth defect, chronic vaginismus.
Three years in, she started wanting
kids, and I still wanted what she wanted.
We spent a year with dilators and technicians,
electrodes pulsing her muscles three times a week.
But when she was finally ready,
I couldn’t dredge up the desire.
We started fighting. Long shouting matches
triggered by everything and nothing.
A twisted miracle: the fighting made me
hard, so we hurried upstairs and fucked.
We fought, we fucked, and out came a daughter.
We fought, we fucked, and out came a son.
Small Bother
She was always gentle,
my drunk mother rubbing
her pelvis against mine,
as if she were brushing
my hair, or folding
blueberries into batter.
She’d rock herself,
roll over, pass out.
She never took off her bra
or my pajamas. I never
reacted, still as a G.I. Joe.
I didn’t tell anyone.
This was one small thing
I thought I could handle.
Mickie Kennedy is a gay writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland. His work has appeared in POETRY,The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, The Sun and elsewhere. His first full-length book of poetry, Worth Burning, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in February 2026. Follow him on social media @MickiePoet or his website mickiekennedy.com.
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