by Sandra Mc Pherson
He doesn’t like it, of course-
Other, who don’t wear it but see it, do.
He’s pale, like a big desert, but you can find flowers.
No, not entirely pale:
Between shin and ankle the twin sun marks;
And where his shirt (now draped from a chair back)
Was, he contrasts with dark hands
And neck/face
Like a rained-on street where a car has just been driven
Away.
Don’t picture a beer paunch.
And he is a smooth animal, or soft where he isn’t smooth,
Down to his toadskin testicles.
He lies prone on clean bedsheets.
There is a single light in the room.
Now run your hand down his back, it’s small, and up
The hips and over. Their sheen’s like that
On blue metal music boxes made to hold powder.
But the rest of him is sprouted with black down-going hair,
His whiskers in so many foxholes,
Eager to out.
Are they in any order?
Age has so far
Remained locked inside.
I’m not a doctor
And glad not to have a doctor’s viewpoint.
I’m glad I haven’t the petite,
overwhelmed sight of an antibody.
And yet I’m not just anybody perusing his body-
I have a reason to like it better than I like other bodies.
Someone else can praise those.
Each lonely and earthly, wanting to be celestial.
