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Roger Finch

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Body Games

Begin with your nasty boy’s games. As we walk
naked through the tall blond fescue, the sun rubs
its longed-for father’s hands across our narrow chests,
down our fish-silver buttocks, through the slingshot
y’s between our thighs. The grass through which we strut

hides more than half of us. From where the cows graze
or from the road, no one can see me push, stiff,
against silk stalks, against your hip, my own hand,
anything, drawing the smooth sheath of the air
over me. No one can see you, just one year

younger than me but still unhaired, the sweetbreads
gleaming palely behind your half-cocked boy’s penis
as you mimic me but can do nothing. No one
will see me wrestle you to the ground and slide
artlessly along you as you show what you did

with other boys, milk me lushly into the ground
and then as I lie spent against you, try and try
yourself but fail. Who suggested it first? You stole
the key from your mother, led me to the shack
in the woods where furniture was stored, wifelike

stripped and lay face down submissively beneath me,
and it was you who taught me to revel in
your body’s easiness, but what fallen angel
taught you? I would have to confess. Again and again.
And you outgrew the game that was for me a sin.

 

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