The Bronzes

Armour / Amour

It should end with us meeting on the bus,

The camera around your neck,

My tote bag stuffed with paperbacks,

My beloved dead saying:

Be restrained.

Try to sneak

A blurry photograph before you get off

And see something disgraceful.

You could lick the fear off my skin.

You could lick the sunscreen off my legs.
 
Your flesh and photographs,

My desire to be captive.

Put your camera in my mouth.

My heart throws itself

Against my ribs. If you capture

Other men

Here with us, they are ghosts—

But nothing ethereal

About them, they reek.

That blurry photograph makes me think of the underworld,

Of all the strangers

Not coming back, developing

Into abstractions.

My beloved dead saying:

Be restrained. 

Allegory of Love

Love jerked me up by my hair and told me I was its slave.
It was 6 a. m., I didn’t even know.
Ouch, I said.
It pressed down on me.

I searched around to give it something.
My expensive shirt was on the floor.
But my mortal body was the only currency.
So we made love

the way other men subordinate beasts or submit
to tyranny. 
It held on to my wrists.
It didn’t let me shave.

I’m going to have you forever,
it told me.
You can have me for a while,
I said. 

The Bronzes

Arms reach up from the sand.
An amateur scuba diver finds them.
 
            *

He thinks it is a dead body at first.
But the arms are bronze.

            *

Soon they are lifted from the water.
bodies sprung fully formed—

            *

their calcite eyes and silver teeth,
their lips and nipples copper.

            *

There are two of them, both with beards.
Like a father and son.

            *

Even though they’re soldiers, their poses are so relaxed.
Their faces kind and gentle like people on vacation.

            *

No wreck or anything survives.
Maybe they were being stolen.

            *

This year it’s been fifty years above the water again.
That was before I was born.

            *

Everything seemed to happen back then.
Like being asleep, then being awake.

            *

Men can tell you time isn’t real
but look at all it’s done.

            *

Masculine arms lifted me.
Masculine arms held me while I slept.

            *

I woke up stinking
breaking the surface of my life.

            *

Something was lost, something wrecked.
Something looted, something recovered.

            *

My back to your chest,
my feet perched on yours.

            *

We would know one another’s body
in any context now.

            *

I could be bronze,
my blue eyes flecked with gold,

            *

I could belong to you
or belong to no one.

Night Autobiography

A love so penetrating

It is always unreturned

That’s been the organizing desire

Of my life.

There are ghosts in these streets, in these faucets,

In the radiators 

That hiss all night and make me so hot

I wake up covered in sweat.

It’s no wonder I’ve wasted months at a time.

Nights spent

Playing ostentatious music.

For many nights,

I was the misfit, the broken one, the one

No one ever would love.

But then one night

A bearded man slid his fingers in my underwear 

And said to his friend, So clean.

I like how pink your body is.

Do you want it gentle? one night asked.

I want it hard, said another night.

Saint Hervé, I will honor your earthly

Ambition. I will write dead letters

To you and all the others sent away

To the underworld.

In my short life, I’ve fallen in love, but that’s mostly it.

Taken in the dark

And humiliated

By the deep sea.