One last from the new collection.
It's always nice for me to read these
out loud because then I realize where I need more vision.
But it's nice.
So thank you for being my Guinea pigs for these poems.
[LAUGHTER]
Thank you for reminding me.
All right.
This one's called "Good Boy."
"Wasn't I a good boy once?
Wasn't I once stripped of body hair and knuckle,
a laugh so clean it stretched like a white sheet
on the clothesline?
Was it my voice once, the contagious
notes of a two finger bell?
The rest in my throat now coats those high pitched sounds.
If there is a child in me he hides behind the dull flint
of my hip.
Not alive, not dead.
But lost in the stomach to dissolve like any other color.
Old photographs don't persuade me
that I could have grown into a man who could love
other men with self-restraint.
Who would not ask a man to sleep on the sharp blades of the bed
without complaints.
Surely my anger had always been squatting on--
surely my anger had always been squatting
on its claws eager to tear its way out of my 10-year-old ribs.
And how do you explain this strange ability
to inflict pain?
I must have ingested hatred through the spoons
of my childhood.
I must have been the changeling matured now longing
for things that blister and boil.
Whatever you place in my hand I want
to puncture out of mischief.
Or perhaps, the intentional act of [? unspooling ?] comfort
is to get at its irritated heart and confirm that even
the purest odor stings.
Lover, when I drive the nails to your chest,
your mouth opens white and pasty like a moon.
Do you see me waving back 20 years ago
from the distant planets of my eyes?"