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 of 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 others.

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.