i. Bottom Quark
Top, bottom, up
down, charm
me into strange
submission, Quark,
just this one time
we can poof away
time like snaps
leave no trace of
feelings I once had.
You top, I’ll bottom
and one day you’ll decay
become me. Then you
can lean into my synaptic cleft,
but don’t get too positive
or I’ll annihilate you
into radiation.
If two bottoms collide we cling
we fuse, become dangerous
sticky extra buttercream icing
all bagged up, too valuable to throw
in the trash, too weird
to defrost, a baggie no one wants
to open. Our worth, though, immeasurable
bigger than the joy of the universe
the day that Quark was born.
Joy, unbidden, unwanted, uncorked
now impossible to disentangle
from the reality of negative blueness.
On the other hand, positive redness
glows like my spanked bottom asking
my top to love me until the end of time.
We’re just two Quarks against the world.
ii. Top Quark
Gluon sits at the edge of my bed
at the border of sleep wake cycling
to work on a rusty unicycle
in sticky dreams. Gluon wakes
with spent cum on a jiggly belly
remembering nothing about how it came
to be. Massless it stretches flat on the duvet
urging Top Quark to stop
overdoing it. My trusty particle,
my mediator, gluey resists the urge
to get involved, directly
positioning itself as a switch
as an ambassador of love in all forms.
It comes at me like anticolour, stripping my world
of blue, red, yellow as I see stars. Don’t shoot
the messenger, Gluon yells: I only warn
of nuclear force to come. Gluon wants to protect
me, bind me with shibari rope to
to a more stable entity but what’s the fun
of that. A dangerous existence gives me peace.
Maggie Burton is a Newfoundland writer, violinist, and municipal politician. Her debut book of poetry, Chores (Breakwater Books, 2023), won the 2024 Griffin Canadian First Book Prize, received a silver medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her work has been published in PRISM international, The Malahat Review, Riddle Fence, Room, Best Canadian Poetry, and elsewhere.
