Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

In this same YMCA sauna I watched a pugnacious little guy (my sense was a Boston Irish tough) fiddle with himself across the bench from me in a way that almost resembled the cruising gestures (and more) that are frequent and sometimes desirable in this sharp-scented wooden box. Others were there and I couldn't quite get the picture. We were most of us naked; he had his hand over his genitals as if he were pushing them down, which was something slightly different than the usual lengthening pull considered a come on for obvious reasons. He came and went a couple of times and I couldn't complete the picture which wouldn't settle or cohere. There was no seduction in the little room, I could feel that I couldn't feel it. He was a small tough guy, barking at someone on the bench above to move their feet so he could sit. I looked as I didn't look I needed a completing piece. The curly hair, his scruffy wiry beard, slim but rough-and-ready torso. I saw two lines upwards diagonal running from beneath his nipples, long scars where tissue had been removed. I looked back at his dick without looking: His hands still pushed slyly down to keep the disobedient skin pendulous: something two-dimensional, a suggestion rather than a fact. I didn't need another clue I couldn't see. This is the ultimate male province, I thought, locker room and showers in an urban YMCA, made maler by the gay sex that always did or didn't happen. The courage and daring trapeze flight without a net of this person delighted me. Though it took me fifteen minutes to decode I considered his victory complete.