JOSEPH LEGASPI
Boys
There is no loneliness like theirs
Bearers of the burdens of legacy
Superheroes monsters Legos and blue
Boys are their mothers’ true love
Prone to territorial pissing
Caterpillars between their legs
Drones boars and stallions
They tear small animals
Into pieces bound to set things
On fire wake-up in cold sweat
Castration and lupine nightmares
Boys look to the sky for escape
Fly dangerously close to the sun
Comic books spinning wheels a swim at sea
Boys kiss one another, and feel anger shame
Each slides a hand down the front of a woman
Continent in their imagination
Fail miserably there
Play the fool overcompensate
Spread out their legs to distant landscapes
Prodigal sons grow coarse
Rhinoceros skin a tusk while at it
Warring war cultures
Steel mortar plastic and wood
Pallbearers miners butchers and priests
Boys refuse to dance when the dancing matters
Destined to break their daughters’ hearts
Their hair cascade like ribbons in barbershops
Mirroring eyes well up with clarity and remorse
Adam in the apple lodged in the throat
Prostate of the idyllic body
In search of their mothers boys will
Love many women and men
Musk oil the lot of their
Forefathers fathers
Mankind’s foreskin
more poetry
read fiction
read nonfiction
SUZANNE PARKER
the sparrow lifts the spent condom into the air
The police have been stopping
these gay, park-dark trysts
but beneath the branches, off
the path, the mulch is sharp-
scented. Strange passions
that let us flee into the rush
after the patrol car passes.
Imagine the nest built
of all our spent selves,
thin sheaths glistening
in daylight, grimed and lifted
into something else.
Practice
“I’m practically asexual.”
posted by Tyler Clementi on a website for men
Do you think it’s easy,
practicing not
to touch?
Subways, check-out lines,
even the passing
of change—
a thumb’s extravagant cushion,
fingernails like bird’s feet
skittering across the skin.
Try refusing it.
How the eyes must sink
and hold only the ground.