I adore my lover's stomach, how there is enough of him that he ripples like a lake-top, how the scars of his appendectomy bisect him from side to side.

Sometimes he clutches his belly, shakes it, gives it a voice. Or we lie side by side, pulling our scrotums into different shapes to amuse. When he stretches his purple-brown skin and says, It's a bat, I laugh because it's true. 

ZACH KENNEDY-LOPEZ is an MFA student at Rutgers University–Camden. He received his BA from Southern Oregon University and his MA from UC Davis, and between the two he worked as a wordslinger/occasional truthbender for a corporation specializing in overpriced food gifts. He’s a cat-dad who likes swimming, Mexican literature, and Latin American electronic music. His work has appeared in West Wind Review (under the pseudonym Gavin Hollingsworth) and Vortex.