Untitled 1975–86

By now, the docks have succumbed to the oyster shells

climbing their wearied legs. There is something to be said

about rot. There is something to be said about how

black gloves can open a body, nothing to look past,

just the blood. Your fingers move cold

in me now. If I told you I loved you, you’d have me

walk the plank. Touching someone is another way

to skin a person alive. I could fear you but I fail to

understand the gravity of persimmons. Your shale

hands peeling down my chest. I am wet

with grief for a man I presumably have never met, sick

for his tongue to snake its way around my lungs, his fever

runs itself up my blood, but tell me, what

man is not like the last, starving and made full

of nylon nets awaiting a catch. If I told you I loved you,

the beams under us would grind themselves to filth. I only fear

what my mouth cannot swallow. I would let you

cut holes in my flesh, cyclical wounds made by a paring knife, a new

set of polished jaws. Make me a man, make me hunger

like you. I wonder what will give first, my body

or this wood barely holding us afloat.