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Peter Scalpello
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the poet
Queer poet and sexual health therapist Peter Scalpello hails from Glasgow. Their work has been published internationally, and their debut collection, Limbic, will be published by Cipher Press in 2022.
the poems
when i was in two
bodies, halved
insisting on life i dressed
myselves up, like a wound
as a bigger me, older & more engendered
than i am even now
though, then, i of course
defied age & sex
my father’s masculine was anger
i first gauged as urges indulged
to etch, as caveperson
the letter S with
a (nondescript) wrench, made up
of roughened integers so
erasure shaped our liminal space
& the inside of his testicles read sis
let’s say the impulse
to deface already had
infinite rotational symmetry
it seems to surface in me today
screaming on regent street
at the injustices of the world
my mother’s feminine was doubt
i sensed in her primary colours
& her venus, which is the name
of a razor i took to both eyebrows
though barely there & now
vanished, replaced them with
love hearts; sky, sun, wine
but the security, i could literally inhale
it! i was untarnished & fine
& when i looked back up i was already
here
when i was two people, doubled
everything served
disappeared down
my throat until the suburbs
brought it all back up again
with seven pints of revelation
to ingest the suede shoes
& the unwell man you see all the time
is you
both cells unmarried & yet
a replication, as healing
means to be repeatedly broken over again
when
fingertips were viscous
& not-yet yellowed, the matter of us
tasted so gorgeous—
are you coming with me, or just
merely going
begin again
when i was in two
Shetland
at the tideline the surfacing sun
overwhelms the horizon
like an ingrown hair and a fish
-erwoman i bothered proposes
that the mackerel here thrive because
when they see the scenery they’re compelled
to make love
it reminds me
of a couple i’ve recently been
spending time with
who met at the memorial of a friend
in ’86
a generation removed
my thumb taps on chests of dads
to replace my own and
assigned-at-birth flesh shapes
that make the gulls above scream
with laughter over the indelicacy
of human orogeny
how one-dimensional
the race for intervention of an all-out
stranger must seem from up there—
my handheld dreamland
the realistic sea beneath us
winking
Devil Works
In the reptilian squish of this
horned skull, the faggotry
I once neglected and tangential
victimhood I again entertain
coexist, distinct
but sensorially linked.
Science!
Had I further bulldozed both,
I could’ve
been the gayest construction
worker you ever laid
eyes on, all YMCA-looking
and mid-breakdown.
At any rate, I’ve landed
on an alternate form of mimicry,
evangelism. Decked out
like the bent great-grandson of Lucifer,
crimson cherub in PVC
and knee-highs, divorced
from a creator I was groomed
to love or be in love with.
Source of an endless eye-roll
on behalf of the street preacher,
his camp little megaphone
calling for my eternal incineration.
Religion!
Were I devilish enough,
I’d mince upon its unorthodox pedestal,
sibilanting archaic
love and radical acceptance: praise
the idiosyncrasy, a blessing!
The only kindling in hetero-sight
graced by the foil of a nation
’s communal pipe, held safe
by something at least.
I had the fire
stomped out of me an eternity ago,
it wasn’t even biblicised.
Like our survival,
faith is leaving a pleasure
path doused in question marks,
theology and natural order inter
secting with prophetic desire.
The devil works hard, but
queers work harder.
Publishing credits
when i was in two bodies, halved: Consilience (Issue 2)
Shetland: The Selkie
Devil Works: In The Past The Future Was Better (Cipher Press)
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