|||

Poetry by Jordan Ferensic

All the group sex I wasn’t invited to

In a house somewhere, someone is getting fucked.
A love story is beginning and ending itself,
Good Days by SZA plays airily
from a phone tipped into a bowl
not so close to its listeners.
Their thoughts are elsewhere,
sensations muffled by bodies abstracting away.
Failure to actualize, failure to communicate,
All the tension is drawn from decouplings,
Pulling outs.

The story will be titled All the group sex I wasn’t invited to”
and it will read just like you’d expect, except
far more beautifully, but it wont be about group sex.
It will be about me, because I find it incredibly hard
to imagine the interiority of someone else.
Instead I will imagine a winner,
a loser, grasping churning writhing peoples;
lovingly dirty, whose wants might be met, will be subverted;
one will beg to become the wilted petals of a bouquet
forgotten on a motel chair, and the other
will be gone by the time they ask.

This is one of my favorite stories,
hypothetical me will say to the hypothetical
someone across the table from me.
Someone drinking an expensive cocktail on my tab,
a someone who feels lofty about all the wrong words,
a someone I think I might not like but who will still be
above, below, inside of, or on me.
I want to seem well read,
want someone to think of how interesting I am
as they explore me, vacantly lusting
for a spot, button, trauma they cannot name.

Shivering frenulum to quivering taint. I hope
someone will press deep enough to leave
a finger sized mark on my identity. Draw
question marks with tooth or nail
down my exposed throat, across my abdomen,
that ask me if it’s okay, to be boy on his back,
okay to be less certain by the moment
if I am worth the body I was given.

I will look at those marks later in the mirror
and not be able to recall the physical sensation,
not remember their hair, or
the way the flowers they brought me smelled.
Not the way I looked after fucking
how I thought I wanted to fuck,
I’ll just know how good it felt
to get in the car afterwards
and leave.

Jordan Ferensic

IG: @ibs_lifestylemag

Up next Tape World: Death Grips, Exmilitary CS [Anything for a Weird Life] Three poems by kyrah gomes
Latest posts Six Prose Poems by Howie Good Two Poems by Robin Arble TO THE MANAGER OF THE RESTAURANT WHO WAS SO DISAPPOINTED IN ME FOR STEALING HER PULLED PORK by Benjamin K. Drevlow MY COUSIN DIED AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS SHIRT by John Crawford Two Poems by Daniel Joseph APPOINTMENT WITH SCOTCH by Avee Chaudhuri Three Poems by Robert John Miller Three Poems by Jeffrey Hermann RIGHT, JUST A REGULAR HEAD BUT A TINY MOUTH LIKE ONLY A STRAW COULD FIT by Dan Weaver WOLVES by John Biron PARADISE COVE GOLF COURSE by Tex Gresham and KKUURRTT ON KRAMER & DOUGLAS' MILESTONES [Film Correspondence] Two Poems by Spencer Eckart FOCUS IS A RITUAL by Michael Baruch BOMBS??? by Matthew Washington EWA: BALTIMORE DIY WRESTLING by Mark Wadley ATIVAN HALEN by nat raum Two Poems by Ammara Younas THE KNIGHT OF HIDDEN INWARDNESS by Jon Doughboy Two Poems by Thomas Friedle I'M ON THE FENCE ABOUT SAM THE 10-FOOT RAT by Arik M. Two Poems by Shane Moritz THE YEAR WE STOPPED BEING GIRLS by Sreeja Naskar OCTAHEDRON — (R)EVOLUTION by Arundhati Charan THERE IS NOTHING INTERESTING TO DO WITH MONEY by Bernard Cohen Three Poems by Sophie Appel THUMPER by Avery Gregurich pd187 interview CALAMITIES (I GOT A NEW MOUSTACHE) by David Hay Two Poems by Nathan Steinman 06.26.2025 in NYC: BRUISER PRESENTS the MOOD RING MELEE