Eli Invents

Rob Macaisa Colgate

new ways of tricking me into taking my antipsychotics every night.1.      We go to Tinuno for kamayan, play puppets with the milkfish         and squid, and he slips the pills into the shredded mango salad,         pinches a handful into my mouth.2.     He pretends to get really into cold pressed juices, turmeric ginger lemon shots        with cayenne and quetiapine. He tells me that in order to stomach it        he needs to hold my hand and take the shot at the same time as me.3.     Folding the pills into American cheese, he insists our dog is too self-conscious        to take his dewormer alone.4.     The old spoon-as-airplane method, applesauce dripping.5.     After a dazzled night at Barbarella, a pharmaceutical burlesque: one by one        undressing the pills from their bottles, svelte fingers placing them        onto his soft pink tongue, saliva welling, eye contact like a rocket taking off.        I lie back on the bed, propped up on my forearms, and he crawls        onto me, slowly, tilts my chin up with one careful thrust of his fingertips        and kisses me deeply.

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Photo of Rob Macaisa Colgate

Rob Macaisa Colgate (he/she/they) is the author of the poetry collection Hardly Creatures (Tin House, 2025) and the verse drama My Love is Water (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2025).

Cover of Sixth Finch Spring 2024

Spring 2024

Editor
Rob MacDonald

Associate Editor
Jaime Zuckerman

Sixth Finch is an online journal of poetry and art, founded in 2008 and updated quarterly.

Poems in Sixth Finch have appeared in Best of the Net, The Best American Poetry, Bettering American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize.

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