Untitled 1975–86 ["There was a boy who once ruined"]

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.