Tonight, walking the AIDS
memorial, I think about
the man who hydrated
his partner by feeding
him ice chips with his
mouth. Someone stumbles
down the path, maybe drunk,
maybe a little
fucked up, & I know not to make
eye contact, not to stop.
But I do stop. This man
wants to fuck
right here & now
on top of the red
earth. Back East where
I grew up, the past persists
sinister as a forest: a man hit
on another man
in a rural bar & thus
was beaten with a cast-iron pan,
laid across the tracks,
& severed by a train.
Here, his lips still sweet
from the clove
he smoked, this stranger
kisses me like those men
of our fathers’ generation
who’d rendezvous in parks
past dark. Never again
will I destroy the earth
by flood, God told Noah
after the sun broke
through, the covenant
signed in rainbow.
Once, I believed in God.
Convinced that the earth
was his own
beating heart,
I talked to him out loud
from Broken SpectreFind more by Jacques J. Rancourt at the library
Copyright © 2021 Jacques J. Rancourt
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.