Personal Forest
By James Cagney
I stood on the ledge
of the bathroom sink
irritated, resolved
my mother’s clippers
a growling chainsaw
in my hand.
I recalled my cousin––
seven years older––
who humbly bragged
over three fresh pubic cords
he found freshly minted
falling through his fingers.
When I lowered the curtain
before the vaporous afro
my body produced in the dark
he exploded in Tex Avery debris––
all rubberized limbs, spring-loaded eyes.
Then later, over a mouthful of Apple Jacks,
diagnosed: Glands!
Maybe thyroid. Something like that.
Later that summer
when his older brother
caught glimpse o f the black lichen
blurring the surface of my stomach,
he pounced like an arachnid
twirling testing pruning
with smiling white nails––
demanding how, and if
any leftovers
remained for him
No boys
generated as much body hair
as I did
Not even my father
who, every night one season,
watched my mother
cure my pre-school back & belly
with a marinade of calamine & zinc.
So––
in the name of friends
I would never make
and attention
as I did.
I did not want in the new
junior high showers
I sheared myself.
Soft, curling fleece
snowballed
tumbling
down my stomach
spiraling silently into the still
pond of the toilet.
The clippers
left chalk-lines
down my chest & abdomen,
scratch marks correcting
a wrong answer.
This is the first time I
remember ever wanting
to hide
part of myself.
I wanted to be nondescript
like the ochers.
So Fresh. So Clean.
Copyright Credit: James Cagney, "Personal Forest" from Martian: The Saint of Loneliness. Copyright © 2021 by James Cagney. Reprinted by permission of Penguin Random House LLC.