HEART BENEATH A DOOR
Now would you write
a poem about my butt?
— Gabe Zander
It's not impossible. And, yet,
the boy will never linger here —
but from behind, the snippet of straight,
white neck, a hint of the gentle
river his frail spine makes, slope
of muscle and promise down below.
The boy-man with luminous, blue-
veined skin. His unwary aplomb,
an utter balance between the now and
then. This is not easy —
anything but a mother-like love
seems untoward. But here is a butt
on the cusp, a butt in the shape love
takes: through one eye the flesh like
the cut of an apple, a gentle divide where
the world scrapes by, another eye's loss
or felicitous gain. I know the heart —
and the implacable world. A place of closed
rooms, of low light. So, from this dark eye:
two white lobes, though fragile and slight, like
two more chances, like two chambers beating, like
a perfect heart slipped beneath a solid, shining door.
First published in 5 A. M.
