Hook

I was a priapic boy: the prow of a galleon
breaking through the warm carribée.          avast

the babysitter and I playing hide and seek
no search party: just him wrestling against me:

chained to the armoire.                        a belt in my mouth
my knobby prisoner embouchured by his breathing hole

I was always a lost boy: swept into the nevernever
one among the private order.               who hung out

long after dark.                      caught lightning bugs.               who
erected forts: buttressed against quizzical adulthood

who were hairless and soprano and angelically ungendered
whose dirtiest word was “balls”                  those things we lacked

a strange kid would yank our underwear up our cracks
he and his nasty friends hid by the creek and smoked

“mama wants to know what’s happened to your shirt
how come you come home without it?”

he said I had pretty hands.                     as he tied them to the dresser.

I was the boy who dreamed he could fly

I do believe            [clap your hands]              I do believe

Original appearance in Shampoo.