Spotted

On a flight from perpetually clogged and flatly bright LA

to the proudly humble and satisfyingly depressed

St. Paul, a thin and fit leather-clad older man, his knees

bent and bony shoulders dropped, searched for his phone

with his cell phone light, patting, spinning, peering with

increased panic and frustration, before the softly embarrassed

realization. Settling there for the flight to slope into

the smoky air of the land of Great Lakes and the noble dead.

We fear our revenants, I say, but mean I fear

my revenant in these bodies—I am comforted by my envy

of his thin legs and elegant fashion sense—I was never

taught the epistemologies of fabric and leather, of taste,

and it’s too late now. I was never seeded with the lie

of beauty, never the cute one, more the disappearing one,

the one arriving with the clamor of nose drawing, sneezing

and the glorious reddening nose, the one dripping eyes

and constant flow. My limbs were spotted with the scarring

of scabs picked and re-picked for the strange pleasure

of pain and blood, the pussing and pink pigment of bared

skin, soon I would hide the spotted skin in trousers, as child

and deep into adulthood, consider the calculus of exposure

at sea and at pools, my tongue the trained distraction

so that I would be heard for wit and distracting brilliance,

the mastery of the grace that would haunt those I hoped

would like me—all an illusion, of course, I know

this now, though then I crossed the city as a wounded

man, in constant limp for the deformed ankle,

with the flaming itch of chafing thighs, the burnt

flesh scent rising, my stomach churning within the burn

of desire and hurried meals—I walked flagellated

by a constantly betraying body, that I pushed on, through

sweat and labor, not in search of beauty, nothing such

but for ease—the ease of self-love, the hope in finding

desire in another, the hope of triumph on the field

such modest ambition. The artist I knew could make beauty

with concentration and the gift of the hungry eye, so I learned

the pleasures of deep silence, the sinking into absence

in the charcoal’s scratch and smudge, hours slipping by

and before me emerging a pure grace, the magic

of beauty. It was my comfort—where I would walk toward,

entering Hope Gardens, armed with pads and pencils,

to find under some secret seclusion the sweetness of darkened

fingers, so familiar, so holy, so necessary and precious.