Ambrose Albert (he/him | il) is a genderqueer poet, community organizer, and amateur drag king (Guy Haute-Ween) living on the traditional unceded and unsurrendered territory of the Wolastoqiyik people. His debut collection of poetry, Bec & Call (Nightwood Editions, 2018), won the New Brunswick Book Awards’ Fiddlehead Poetry Prize and he served a two-year term as the City of Fredericton’s Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2020. Ambrose is currently working on his sophomore collection of poetry, mal à l’aise.
“‘so who does what during, you know?’ takes inspiration and its title from Chen Chen’s ekphrastic poem ‘Zombie Kindnesses’ (2020), written in response to Sandy Skoglund’s Radioactive Cats (1980); Caravaggio’s painting The Incredulity of Saint Thomas (1602), in which the doubtful Apostle puts his finger into Christ’s side wound; and episode four of the Netflix original series Brand New Cherry Flavor (2021), in which the protagonist discovers a vulva-like opening in her side through which she births a kitten and gets fisted. The poem is an unexpected response to the titular question, an invasive question many queer folks are asked when it comes to our sex lives that warrants as invasive of an answer.”
my partner is Christ, newly resurrected
and I the incredulous Thomas: gently
feeling the opening in their side with
with a single finger first, then two—
coaxing the flesh tenderly until my
fist can fully penetrate the holy ghost.
the same way you come up against
the cervix if you go deep enough,
you can feel the throbbing of the heart,
can clasp your hand around the wriggling
kitten of it and experience the skip,
that little death that comes from true
ecstasy: is it so hard to imagine what
two bodies can do with one another now?
