“Pinned”
Like newly acquainted lovers,
they rip and tear as if
they’ve never seen a body,
these men grappling and grunting
in an auditorium rumbling
with cheers and chants,
families and coaches
shouting the moves.
One pins. One submits.
One young man falls to his back,
slips his legs around the other’s waist,
tightens the tension.
How could I not find them desirable,
the way they move and restrict each other?
The way the sweaty mat takes them,
hard and consenting in its body?
Blood drains from their faces
as hip to hip they shimmy and roll.
A hand slaps the ground. It’s over and I’m
breathless with jealousy,
with the memory of late nights
in a crowded college bar. Short skirts
and over-served fraternity boys.
Virgins, smooth as a drawn bath.
Lonesome nights
I’ve drunk too many,
stumbled home alone
in the dark. Lonesome
nights I’ve arrived
blurred and sexless
on the edge of the grass
at my front porch.
I remember empty beds
and apartments. Space atop me
empty, weightless. Suffocating.
“Chain-Link Fence”
Where softball players picked dandelions
to weave crowns for their heads.
Where I put my tongue against the harsh cold metal
to learn the taste of blood.
Where a girl named Abigail puffed her cigs,
the little engine that could.
When high school boys and girls up against it,
Pushing against each other, the metal
clashed and clinked.
Once I saw John punch the metal
again and again after Sarah told him
how many periods she’d missed.
It was the edge of all we knew.
Where young boys dug tunnels with their fingers,
like we were dogs
trying to escape.