Mickie Kennedy

Today at 2pm My Testosterone Says Adieu

The doctor asks me which cheek.

I point left, lowering my jeans.

Sorry, it’s thick, he says, and I don’t have time

to make the obvious joke.

Hot flashes, he warns. Insomnia. Chronic

exhaustion. No libido. No erections.

You have about an hour, he says as he leaves.

To masturbate, he adds.

One last time, he didn’t say.

Back home, I insert myself

under the top sheet. Who

should be the final object?

Jeff, the college rugby boy who loved

frotting? Tommy, who wept

whenever he fucked me?

I settle on pure fantasy, pulling up

a photo of an obscure novelist

who’s ignored my whiskey-lubed DMs.

He’s standing with his husband

near a sculpture, an uncut marble penis

floating to the right of his head.

Touching myself, I become that hovering

cock, arriving where I’ve arrived

at least ten thousand times

over the past four decades—the crest

of a cliff, a breast about to lose

its final drop of milk. I run my fingers

across that tender strip

the doctor jabbed repeatedly:

a line of scabs, raised like braille.

He shot me up with gel,

separating my prostate

from my rectum. I’m almost

soft again, so I jump

on the Hub and flit between tabs,

a jumbled jitter as I stroke myself

hard as before, back

at the edge, typing out my frenzied

want, then suddenly tumbling

beyond it, that final lip—my final finish.

Mickie Kennedy is a gay writer who resides in Baltimore County, Maryland. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, The Threepenny Review, The Southern Review, The Sun and elsewhere. His first book of poetry Worth Burning will be published by Black Lawrence Press in February 2026. Follow him on Twitter/X @MickiePoet or his website mickiekennedy.com