Mark Doty
Hood
A master leads his slave
through the bar,
the slighter man bound
to his lodestar
by a leash hooked
to his collar,
every surface of him swathed,
rubber, leather,
hard to tell in this light.
Little slits in
the hood , almost nothing
of him visible.
They look, I think, ridiculous
—but something
compelling about it, too.
That you can see
only the outside, the absurd,
elaborate clothing,
universe of buckles
and straps,
every bit of the body
sealed away,
so nothing of the interior
can be known?
From a distance sex looks,
inevitably, awful:
what’s less graceful
than transport?
Face focussed
to a single point,
clenched, contorted, or the mouth
stretched wide—
Therefore this exterior’s sealed,
blank, so that we might
guess at what lies
beneath: happy abdication,
the will locked down at last,
unable to choose
or to act. Who knows?
Impenetrable,
what’s paraded before us.
through the bar,
the slighter man bound
to his lodestar
by a leash hooked
to his collar,
every surface of him swathed,
rubber, leather,
hard to tell in this light.
Little slits in
the hood , almost nothing
of him visible.
They look, I think, ridiculous
—but something
compelling about it, too.
That you can see
only the outside, the absurd,
elaborate clothing,
universe of buckles
and straps,
every bit of the body
sealed away,
so nothing of the interior
can be known?
From a distance sex looks,
inevitably, awful:
what’s less graceful
than transport?
Face focussed
to a single point,
clenched, contorted, or the mouth
stretched wide—
Therefore this exterior’s sealed,
blank, so that we might
guess at what lies
beneath: happy abdication,
the will locked down at last,
unable to choose
or to act. Who knows?
Impenetrable,
what’s paraded before us.
Two poems from The Vault, a sequence titled
after a leather bar in Provincetown
Mark Doty’s many awards include the TS
Eliot Prize. His latest collection is Source
(Cape, 2002). He lives in New York. He is
visiting London in summer 2004 to lead a
masterclass at the Poetry School.
Page(s) 32-33
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The