Tony Colella: Two Poems

Tony Colella

More Than You Can Know

I am more than a man. I am going to be a doctor. I am respectable. I don't dance. My hair is
Peter Pan's. I fuck other men. My parents were never married.

I am more than human. I am a medical student in the emergency room. I wear a white jacket with
a nametag. I have a scar in the middle of my left thigh. My scrubs are blue, or green. I don't like
the color pink. I spent a week with each parent before being traded. I don't tell the truth. I don't trust.

I am more than you think. I don't get emotional. I am walled. I can crack a man's chest. I don't
care about blood. A suicide can code in front of me and I can forget. My left leg has been impaled
by a thirty-six-inch piece of rebar. I liked the hospital. I like hospitals. I don't always use a condom.
My mom wouldn't let my father take me for six months after the fall.

I am more that this. I glower, except at the old ladies with cancer. I remembered the suicide girl the next
day. I first intubated a year ago. My suicide girl was seventeen, colorless, with blue lips. I don't like sports.
I paid for school myself, and with loans. I've done nine central lines. I have never loved in a relationship.

I am more. I like heights, even though I fell onto the rebar. I like men, even though they all want sex,
to be fucked, and nothing more. I like hospitals, even when I toss onto the sidewalk because my suicide
girl is too pale, too small, too me. I'd like to find love, even though I just started an ex on the cocktail.
I like my parents, when I remember the smell of almond oil on my mom's pillow.

I would like there to be more. I will begin my residency in July. I threw myself off half a building when
I was eleven. I failed where the colorless girl succeeded. I am eighty thousand dollars in debt. I like
helping people. There's nothing more.

Pornos

The men are molding me around something I’ve already molded myself.

They’re convincing. I believe them. It’s all private.

They’re molding me around my doorknob. Around the legs of my tripod. Into and under and
through the sheets, from above and below, side face-front ass-back. They mold the Play-Doh
thought, rolled long wiggled around cut up mashed again.

So private. It’s all so private.

The blinds are shut, my room is dark. They mold me into the bed until I’m a part of it not them,
changed with the sheets for a color that better matches the tanned walls. They all say the same
things, ass lips cock, good good great. They’ve molded me well, their choice.

I’m theirs maybe an hour. It’s quiet here, and private. It’s all so private.

Tony Colella graduated with a BA in English from Northern Arizona University in December 2008. He also spent time in Antioch College's arts program. This is his first publication. contact