Untitled 1975–86
After Alvin Baltrop
There was a boy who once ruined
love for me. A bold statement
to hang my tongue on. Now,
like the carpenter ants, I stand
in the corner and watch
others learn this same endless
ruin. You do not just find
field mice in yards tangled with
grass. They too occupy the pitch-
black throats of warehouses. I do not have
a better way of notating starvation; from a distance
a fox fixates beyond the group of boys learning
lust, each naked boy quiet in their removal
of silk flesh. The sunlight freckling their soft
bodies, they too hunger, have yet to learn
why I fear gluttony. A boy helps another pull
lint from his hair and they chuckle
at their friend slothing the long abandoned
plywood, his body painting the docks
in a dusted brandy. The fox notices all
of this and the mouse pirouetting
in between the unsuspecting
boy’s feet. Like them, he believes
he is safe. Like them, he does not know
he is being watched from the dark.
