Never odd or even,
we bear the saint’s confession
given over daily as scars mating,
we grow in freedom from sin
when the music stops, a number
he chooses from the cakewalk
of us broken boy rhymes in steps
fall to take and to be taken by him,
to watch the other boys in hostility
at the square dance of our relations,
our Hialeah fathers cutting lines
too late to find Friday night fires
off school grounds in the vacant lots
of my Immaculate Conception bash
won before the Sisters of Mercy saw
we were tied up and gulped down
like tangelos sweet until
plucked and bruised like us,
we clung to crooks in arms bent
into sour knots of stories sung
all before in black wax and hope
of butter-whipped worlds turned
together in a lottery of frozen gest
moved into white contested squares
of red-ribboned air floating on us
freckled flakes, butterscotch eyes
of fighting words and more wishes
to burn in crisis with my long lips
narrow and dipped in spite for him
overwrought again after my moves
in the steam of his disputed calm
no direction or map to claim a loss
when lying with him flowed downhill
like voids dressed up in light on us
as if all boys were stationary fronts
unable to shake a vision of trapping
memory bright as streaking sky, tears
saying goodbye always a lie, like unfit
pain born and told to speak in riddle,
in the lesson of future fury games.
Name not one man.

Photo by Ardian Lumi on Unsplash