men i like. (this is not new)

on becoming the body of t. j. m.

I remember blue cement steps white hair bleached sharp like teeth cut into the gums like diamond the pink of your cheek hung brightly fruits. stuff chest, wrapped down like sausage in plastic chubby through little-boy-button-up those inch hands blue-eyed hips depressed under canvas and the warm valley of under arm like chicken breast those torn small shoes in a voice that reminded me of my brothers I didn’t want you to think that that the whole thing made me outtasorts— so I stabbed hard with the needle until shoulder bled, and you went south to the farm to show your parents your puberty. I saw the boy in you because there were little amounts of woman in you you were too carved out to be a woman you were too plain I still wonder what your funnel look like in the woods we used to dance hard in your sailor cap leather shoes and I noticed your knuckles looked different the cursive made by the tubes that looped out of your green shirt like 7-11 straws but filled with yellow-red blood bits was a valentines card you cut your chest out to leave room for hands to press on bone and your mom said “I want to sit next to my girl” at the dinner and we laughed the incisions were sunflowers for a long time and now they are two white crows between your tattooed suspenders you have more tattoos now that you are barechested all the time your hide is browner and harder shrunken over your muscles like plates grass skirting out of your jaw that you shave in the morning on the mud bank that’s where I picture you you came out to the other camp leader and then you were friends that bang chests and take pictures on the River which never tells you who you are when someone can enter you I don’t know what I imagine down there anymore with fish and wheelbarrow the line of sky chest is flatwide and heavy against you & you are with the land now that has a terrain folding away never in and you have left people behind poetry only in your tent and woody forearms stretched out over bramble scarred and cut to tell stories about the men we are wishing still exist.