Four Poems

by Ernest Chlopicki


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sometimes of course I am hot 

I deliver these self-addressed messages with consistency
of a mirror. It is day infinity of my cells wanting to be dead.
I am hot shit, but to be with an open mouth at this party
is to think of all the other bodies as he’s tongueing me​

down. Bodies that with enough osmosis will hopefully
replace the make-up of my own. I think of my grandmother
who, the reigning queen of wedding rings in kneaded dough,
has always made me aware of the beautiful mysteries of my

form. I think of herself in me, the years of cigarettes, coffee,
and the lack of sunscreen. How she would glimpse in the mirror
and recognise completion. How she would braid the surface
of an apple pie and sugar me with her blessing. I’ve been made of sugar

ever since.

​
thank you boys

vest is patchy moist and sticking to my
back, as I cycle past the Camden Lock Bridge
and pause for a sip of council-distributed water,
a gulp of sewage straight from the fountain.
I am a beautiful butterfly on my bicycle,
spinning and turning the machine of wanting
to be trapped in a see-through jar,
barely breathing.

i have never felt such sweetness as
from these two boys who come to
say hi, and sure they are rough,
but their golden-legged bath, their
perfect cat and their smart TV
make up tenfold for the vastness of suffocation
inside of my jar.

it is like I am born again,
every time my face is held by a pair of hands,
pulled back and set free from choking.
i gasp for delicious air.
born and born again, it is like every time i make
a new umbilical cord until
they all stretch long enough to measure
the span of my wings.

​
so you want a closure pint

You text me when I am on my way,
What would you like?, and I want nothing,
or at least to get it for myself, which would set me free,
but I reply too late. And so there are two pints,
one of which has its foam cut through
with your eager lips. And so I am once again caught
in the fisherman’s net, my stomach anticipating love
pouring down its walls, acid cut through with foam.
And so I am foam itself.

​
Sunday 23rd March 2025

​Split me open and cut my throat
with your gospel of a thousand needles.

Last Sunday I was witness to the Great Process
in which light is given and taken,
also: redistributed.

On my knees, he swung his swollen dick
and mock-drowned me in an ocean weaved out of a million of drops,
also: a single drop made out of an ocean.

I come from a small town that conditioned me not to kill spiders
out of the fear of rain.

In July drought, my grandmother would harvest
final life out of wild strawberries and press them on my lips with a blessing
of a beautiful future, somewhere far away.

And so I kneel at the altar of infinity,
the sting of tears hitting the corners of my eyes,
mucus running down my nose,
I am suffocated by God. I pray.

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Ernest Chlopicki is a queer writer from Poland, currently based in London.
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​​​​​​SHARE - Issue: 1.8 / April 2026