Restraint

not of this boy’s wrists and ankles,
but of my eyes—it does not do to drool
overtly over one’s own student—so
I do my best to keep my gaze on
the visiting poet, even though in truth
I’m a starving dog in sight and scent of steak,
a clawed bear mere inches from salmon,
a gourmand within arm’s reach of glazed
patisserie delights—Napoleons,
Palmieres, almond croissants—or, hell,
the mountain redneck I somewhat am
about to grab grilled hot dogs and
a six-pack.  The point is hunger
circumstances paralyze.  No, I clutch
my notebook, smile at the speaker’s
learned allusions, while my student, on
the edges of my eyes, sitting in
the audience only feet from me,
the boy I’ve secretly studied and craved
for pushing two semesters—big white
frequent smile, easy laughter, endearing
pug nose, brown goatee manly on
a boy only recently old enough to drink—
has, thanks to this warm April day,
worn gym shorts that display
his hairy legs, a muscle shirt from
the tattered edges of which curl
thick, precocious tufts of chest hair,
sweat-curled armpit hair, back hair.
What lust of mine was ever reasonable
or moderate?  Fetish is a well-plowed
furrow:  how I would restrain
him, how roughly I would take him,
what gagged grunts he would make,
how sweetly he would learn to love it,
how gentle and protective I would be
in our sweaty ideal cuddling drowsy
aftermath. Tenderness disallowed is bound
to arrive less and less, and what little’s left
need be buried as uselessness, excess.
How have I come here, where every caress
fully felt is verboten?  I am stealing
a glimpse or five of what is never mine,
these scrawled and manic journal entries
all that’s captured or possessed.

 

Ode to a Dick-Dancer

I never had that body, and I’m not about to now.
It’s classic, needless to say:  big gym-whittled chest

(though hairier would be more to my taste), small waist,
that shocking bubble butt.  He’s shirtless, in ripped-up

jeans more tattered holes than fabric, humping
cigarette smoke atop the bar.  Down his muscled

shoulder and right arm, the black lightning strike
of a tribal tattoo.  He’s college-age, age I teach,

with a shaved head, a scruffy goatee the color of
sourwood honey, sheepish smile atop unself-

conscious gyrations.  I keep my distance, try not to look,
for need is weak, pointless, vulgar.  (There’s no fool

like an old fool, my mother’s voice inside me.)  Instead
I sip the blue fire black light makes of my gin and tonic,

slip into the usual splicings of leather fantasy. 
My captive grunts against silver-gray duct tape

sealing his mouth, fights his bonds as my pickup
crests the ridge, achieves the mountain cabin. 

Lust is any ember eating itself up till it’s robbed of air. 
Possibility is air.  Is it too much Creole food and drink

dulling me tonight, or middle-aged cynicism, swearing
I do not entirely crave what I can never possess,

and at what age must one begin to pay to slip
beauty like unleavened bread upon the tongue?

The layman’s always paying, sheer impossibility
always striving to snuff out longing, longing one of

a million seeds not bound for soil.  I lift him
bound hand and foot into my arms.  Armpit musk,

long eyelash flutter.  He loves his helplessness, loves
my strength, moans with greed beneath his gag.

On the bar before me, a votive candle flickers
inside its small glass bowl.  I can hear it snarling,

sucking air, waddled in wax like middle-aged fat.
I want to top it, snuff it, smell wick-smoke’s acrid

melancholia.  Enough gin, enough oblivious youth.
My goodbye’s silent, another reluctant glimpse, absorbing

his white smile, nexi of nipples like some Greek hero’s
apotheosized constellation.  Time to exit Oz, though

at the door I risk salt’s pillar and must look back.
Tonight’s deity has moved along the bar to the spot

where I sat and now thrusts himself into the air
of my absence.  On Bourbon Street, among slovenly tourists,

I carry my icon home.  Flung on the bed, pants
tugged down about roped ankles, beneath me

his bubble butt bucks and begs, his heartbeat’s tight
fist slickly grips.  My messiah’s prayers are tape-muffled,

as are his thanks.  Sweat’s silver gathers between us.
All night inside this lie I wake, I wake, I live again.

 

Three Men at Claytor Lake

(for John and Sean)

I don’t know how You arranged this, this surplus
of a midlife.  God knows in my supposed seedtime
I starved, lying in narrow beds alone, hellaciously

het up, as we say in my mountains, for one handsome,
uncaring bastard after another—they know who
they are (Bob, Jack, Paul, Thomas)—primetime wasted

on leather porn and truckloads of Kleenex.  My beard
was black then, my head had hair, I was endowed
sufficiently, I was bright, tender, eager, and at least

somewhat presentable.  Who knows what the problem was?
Well, that void’s left me with a whore’s hunger
to make up for lost time—Carpe penem—so here we are,

by Claytor Lake, my husband, my new lover,
and I.  Warm for November, the season shares
my fortune, the water glitters like my hunting

knife raked carefully last night over a bound boy,
his candlelit chest.  Trivergence, vectors veering
from New York, Massachusetts, West Virginia, to

today’s maple flame silent as owl-flight, breeze
through the lakeside  gazebo.  I am bald, silver
streaks my beard, my chest, my pubes, yet I have

two men to love tonight.  How that lonely youth
would ache with envy, lying in his unwashed sheets,
trying to imagine Tom Selleck tied to a chair,

listening to winter maples creak in wind,
the gas heater at the bed’s foot pop.  Yearn
alone as long as that, and every abundance feels

like miracle.  I touch John’s hand, tug the chain
and padlock around Sean’s neck.  November’s wealth
is milkweed, spilling silver seeds too many to count.

 

© 2009 Jeff Mann

Jeff Mann grew up in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton, West Virginia, receiving degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University.  His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many publications, including The Spoon River Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Laurel Review, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Crab Orchard Review, Bloom, Appalachian Heritage, Best Gay Erotica, Best Gay Poetry, and Best Gay Stories.  He has published three award-winning poetry chapbooks, Bliss, Mountain Fireflies, and Flint Shards from Sussex; two full-length books of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine and On the Tongue; a collection of personal essays, Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear; a novella, Devoured, included in Masters of Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire; a book of poetry and memoir, Loving Mountains, Loving Men; and a volume of short fiction, A History of Barbed Wire, which won a Lambda Literary Award.  He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Visit Jeff Mann online at: filebox.vt.edu/users/jemann2/
Read an Interview with Jeff Mann by Shane Allison
Read Raspberry Moonshine from A History of Barbed Wire