Untitled 1975–86 ["By now, the docks have succumbed to the oyster shells"]
After Alvin Baltrop
By now, the docks have succumbed to the oyster shells
climbing their wearied legs. There is something to be said
about rot. There is something to be said about how
black gloves can open a body, nothing to look past,
just the blood. Your fingers move cold
in me now. If I told you I loved you, you’d have me
walk the plank. Touching someone is another way
to skin a person alive. I could fear you but I fail to
understand the gravity of persimmons. Your shale
hands peeling down my chest. I am wet
with grief for a man I presumably have never met, sick
for his tongue to snake its way around my lungs, his fever
runs itself up my blood, but tell me, what
man is not like the last, starving and made full
of nylon nets awaiting a catch. If I told you I loved you,
the beams under us would grind themselves to filth. I only fear
what my mouth cannot swallow. I would let you
cut holes in my flesh, cyclical wounds made by a paring knife, a new
set of polished jaws. Make me a man, make me hunger
like you. I wonder what will give first, my body
or this wood barely holding us afloat.
Source: Poetry (July/August 2023)