Smolder

[Willahelm]

Smolder

With a shove, she sits him down in a foldable chair
and proceeds to kiss him furiously.

This section feels somewhat bland, running more like prose than poetry in my opinion. Perhaps use a poetic periphrasis. I wonder what others think.

The taste of natural mouth and Virginia Slims
reminds him of the first time
he wanted his brand of love to parallel a petering bonfire –
momentary, illuminating and slight.

To me, the penultimate line seems a little long. Perhaps it is better to balance out the stanza unless you're going for a particular poetic technique (like a meter)

The midst of a midnight squeeze,
her tongue ring thriving like a totem,
grounding him in his boots, ensuring a non-dream;
an extinguishing slip into the present.

Brittle black logs smolder through the night.
In the morning, there is nothing,

there is nothing.

A good metaphor that really reveals nicely itself at the end and in my opinion doesn't entirely like complete cliche. Yet a lot of poets will naturally compare love to heat and fire. The job of a poet now is to now write a poem with something that sets it apart from the others. The rhythm flows with the alliteration I think adding to it. Better yet, none of the lines feel forced to me.