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

The old man in the sauna with failing eyes squints shamelessly to see the lean young thing sitting four feet across from him. I've seen this old guy before with his lost-his-glasses face and hanging skin. Today he's drying himself endlessly - the sauna heat must have him dripping as fast as he's drying - so he can shimmy his towel across his back forever gazing dumbfounded at the seemingly oblivious stud. I've never seen anyone squint like this man does: the whole apparatus of his face seems to deflate. It opens rather than tightens, an ovoid slack that makes him look dazed, as if he were being blinded instead of sighted. In this unnerving blindness I'm thinking it's himself that he can't see. His nose and cheeks and chin diminish in his leering in favor of eyes that widen, emptying their contents and making him look childlike in their single-minded yet vague focus. His ass, I see, is tiny like mine will be and his back and shoulders bristle with long white hairs that are almost erect. Slack jawed and loosened up, some pure pursuit of waning pleasure pulls him. He carries a smile on that divination - it's projection - he sees what he wants to see - there are suggestions and outlines - nobody else can see him he's blown away riding a wind or a current of remembered sex - if he can't really see he can't really be seen - the foolishness is reserved for those looking at him not him looking at them he remains the regard as a component of the persistent revolving lure.