We’ve done this all backwards

and now attempt to fix it with bodies
that might satisfy the urges in our guts
that say love came too quick, too fast.

But we know they will fade, these men
we will fuck, like the porn we once
so carefully downloaded and burned
to discs that now sit unused beneath
old photographs you took of me,
my body as white as clouds moving
across your black backdrop—
what was it? A table cloth? A sheet?
The liner to your old futon?
Bought for 20 bucks from some frat
boy in college.

Somehow we’ve forgotten the details.
 
We make rules for our game
of “hook-up” like a gym teacher
convinced some well-managed exercise
will save the fat kid from getting diabetes
and dying at forty. They are simple rules:
no strangers in our bed, condoms always,
full disclosure to the other.

Part of me thinks you want this
for the good stories I’ll tell.
How I’ll weave tales of bubble-butted
boys with silly screen-names
and bodies that never live up
to their digital avatars.

Tonight I give it a try. You away
on business, me trolling the internet
for boys with glittery abs,
eyes that sparkle until they go dull
in the daylight, their skin as pale
as vampires. One man wants to be
pissed on, another told stories of childhood
spankings as he jerks off in the corner.
It’s hard being an adventurous sex maniac
on the prowl at two a.m., our bed empty.

Tomorrow you will come home
with your bags, your smile, your kiss hello,
and questions in your throat: did I?
Did he? Was it? Though we both know
none of it matters. None of it will erase
my hand touching your hand in my dorm
years ago, or how my body, that first time,
slipped into yours and nearly vanished.

 

note, passed to matthew shepard
                  
i begged him to tie me
to the wrought-iron head board,
to bind my hands together,
my feet in knots,
my face down, ass up,

and he did with the rope he bought
at wal-mart. i wore only a cowboy hat,
jockstrap, fake plastic boots.
he was naked and dark.

it was october.

my fingertips burned numb—the rope
gnawing at my skin. we agreed on a safe
word—“canoe”—but when the leather
of his whip hit my flesh i knew i’d
never stop him. i begged him

to hit me again and again
until i couldn’t feel anything but you,
the fence, the wyoming sky,
not the turn of the fan blades,
nor his teeth sinking in,
white as sunlight.

i imagine that field was full of coyotes
with eyes like glowing marbles,
like searchlights encircling
your beaten flesh, your swollen
eyes, your mouth dry.

i bet you called to them
and even they were afraid
to touch you.

 

© 2009 Stephen S. Mills

Stephen S. Mills earned his MFA from Florida State University. His poems have appeared in The Gay and Lesbian Review, Hoboeye Online Arts Journal, The Broken Bridge Review, PANK Literary Magazine, The New York Quarterly, The Antioch Review, and the anthologies Poetic Voices Without Borders 2 and Ganymede Poets, One. Others are forthcoming in Knockout, Limp Wrist, and Word Riot. He is also the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry Award. He currently lives in Orlando, FL with his partner and his dog. Website: http://joesjacket.blogspot.com/