In Body Sweet
It happened that last June,
jogging down a street
in Indianapolis, my shirt
tight against my chest,
breath not turning over
quick enough for my lungs,
I passed a table set just
outside a bar, full of men
in their fifties. One of them,
blue trucker hat on, shirt
black with orange flames
rising from the waist,
gave his friends the nod
watch this and asked me
I don’t really remember
what, I invent it anew,
about my breasts, and
the feeling like a key turning
in the ignition, the shame
of a joke at my expense,
at this body turned joke,
made me for that moment
murderous and the hole
in the floor of my mind
widened until I could look in
and see the pint
of beer smashed against
this old man’s mouth,
see how you giggle with two
less teeth, I’ll kill you,
you who sit beside friends
who didn’t quite laugh
when you said it, just smiled.
One I think nudged
stop the way we ask our boys
to quit, prey already dead,
outside of a sports bar
going out of business,
on the sidewalk tracing
Virginia Ave. in Fountain Sq.,
our gazes meeting for
the briefest as I jogged
past your group, having
not raised my voice
much less my fist, cowardice
or mercy, I turned the options
over as I carried home
these breasts which sprouted
as a boy. I remember,
so young, like eight,
goddamn, standing
in front of a mirror
alone in the bathroom,
while my folks watched
television, maybe
Sábado Gigante, as I clasped
my left breast
in my hands and pulled
so hard I yelped, pulled
as if I could tear it off,
and another night
I even brought scissors
with me though I couldn’t
bring myself
to pinch the blades
with my fingers.
I worried for so long,
so early, no kidding,
about being mistaken
for a woman, enough
I would lean over tables
in school as if reeling
from a stomach cramp
to hide myself
from the stomach
to the groin. Too, I was one
of those keeping
an oversized tee on while
swimming if at a public pool
and even once at Lake Wedington
during a summer barbeque
in which my father tended
thin strips of steak
on a communal grill,
the coals coaxed into fire
under the foil fastened
to those metal bars,
having a sip from his beer
before giving the meat
a sip, too, and to pass
the time before eating,
my brother and I started
for the water before
my mother noticed my
turning without peeling
and dismissed my vanity
with a swish of the wrist,
to throw her the shirt,
no sense for both flesh
and cloth to soak. I walked,
I think this is right,
to shore
with my arms
swaddled around
my chest until I reached
the shelter of the water,
submerging myself
with the solemn stage
presence of a pastor
dipping the reformed
supremacist into the river.
Which is what I was
really thinking on that run
home in June—it was as if
I’d been dunked into another
body, floating almost,
my knees keeping me
from falling down
the way a shark’s fin
bobs in and out of water.
It was I, the reformed shark,
who came home that afternoon,
trudging into the shower,
reeking of a city in heat
and aborted exercise. Like this
I greeted my sweetheart
who was decorating her toenails
a lacquered color so sweet
she had to paint my thumbnail
too, not touching my hand
but holding the brush steadily,
modeling stillness for me
in a way I know has many
antecedents and probably
is the opposite of radical love
though it moved me enough
to catch myself admiring
my painted thumb while
I lotioned my legs for once.
