Antarctica

Like nights we knelt on the dirt floor

of a dugout, leaned our heads back,

eyes twitching gone, and popped nitrous

canisters into the communion shapes

of our mouths, slipped inside where

everything seemed to be falling snow,

ice, the time split between chasing flies

through a darkened park and sprawling

in sycamore bark—how clean that abyss

we drifted in, like dew, more like pollen,

on our skins; and, beneath, a want

for touch, a kiss, a return. Like nothing

back then, to break an arm latching on

to the bumper of an Impala, or settling back

as the car took us as far as the salted bridge,

before letting the ride go with a mitten

caught behind the chrome waving

from the other side of the river. Like this,

you said, sliding a needle, watching

dope plunge, the body's rush and tow

until you felt something like an angel

hovering above, but it was only pigeon

feathers deviling the air. Those friends

are gone: some dead, dying, locked up

or jailed in themselves; and when I see

some kids running in the heat of a taillight

swirling behind them, I remember we

wanted only to quiet our bodies, their

unnatural hum, a vague pull inward,

some thin furrows gliding over the snow.

Copyright Credit: "Antartica" from Miscreants by James Hoch. Copyright © 2007 by James Hoch. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.