thirteen ways of looking at the faggot
Richard Haney-Jardine
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2022 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Margaret Reid, Traditional Verse
nineteen-eighty-six: 28,712 cases reported, 24,599 deaths
(after stevens)
i.
rising from the sea
blond mane sequined
with buds of algae
and salt, beautiful
guilty as an orchid
ii.
two razors at the sink
rabid with foam
iii.
a flying dutchman who never
comes to port, a tern exiled
to a vast, unrelenting sea of hope
hope the underling of druid love
love blossoming
iv.
four long white tube-socks
coiled, spent like condoms
bedside serpents
v.
put to sleep
like an african violet
barely touched
shrunk
into himself
vi.
six republicans at the
seven sentinel urinals
jangling coins, pretending
not to watch, pinstriped
vii.
stamens furled in an urgent
flower, a motor on the verge
of turning over, a dam awash
with stemmed power, a humming
motel door, but housekeeping knows
viii.
the eighth-grade math teacher
forever sealed his moustache
behind the chaste kiss of marriage.
he still lingers, after football games.
ix.
it's funny the things he'd forgotten
about his childhood home.
the number of chandeliers, for instance
bouquets of chandeliers.
x.
the eagle phone perched on its cradle
waiting to feast at the first dispatch.
Prometheus has stolen fire
but it's ten and he hasn't called.
xi.
from the prom he never went to
a corsage at his breast burst
like carmine ink from a pen
blooming into his chest.
xii.
in the struggle of the other's
arms, they lay turbaned in sheets
slightly moist where the efforts
of sleep made them sweat
breastbone against breastbone,
two sets of twelve ribs each,
none taken, none broken.
xiii.
wearing just your shirt or mine, we've
ceded more than wardrobe, you
gather me up from my dreams
with a smile that stitches through
the smallest petals of my sleep.
how perilous it seemed at first, two
men in love, dear god, but now
at table, your flesh mortifies me,
elbows touching. we. must. live. but. how?
xiv.
