This is something I've been working on that's split into four parts, in a narrative style. It's based somewhat on my own past, though reimagined, as if I'd been good, or at least decent, at sports...instead, I was very clumsy. I was the last boy picked, I was never on my team, nobody wanted me. That narrative has haunted me: my body, being rejected. But I like to imagine what things might have been like; so here's the first two parts, still in the revision phase: Alex. 1. After Practice Lying face down in the grass looking up between the goal posts squinting into the sun lowering behind the tree-line through his brown bowl-cut grown out over his eyes, he feels his hands snug in their flexible gloves, the smell of most soil, cut grass, & pressed against the earth in his thin nylon shorts, a warmth spreads through him; his heart beats fast from the diving & panting & jumping to hug the ball close, that rough embrace. He tastes the sweat dripping from cheeks and forehead, mixed with his own saliva, watching the boys around him laughing and talking, their sweat mixed with the wild sent of sycamore after a rain & he looks down as an earthworm disappears into the mud, & relaxes, supported by his shin-guards, legs up behind him, resting on his elbows, starting to grow hard: a root struck down into the earth. ~ Slipping out of his nylon shorts wresting his arms free of the grass-stained yellow jersey, he steps beneath the steaming water watching cakes of mud dissolve and swirl down the drain glancing cautiously from side to side amidst the occasional giggling & comparisons he looks down at his own thin-thicket of hairs sprouting & as the hot water begins to run cold, like rain he feels a sudden pulsing a new part of himself come alive and thinks of the varied colored bands of earthworms, their elastic texture as his own small cock curls forth with a certain defiance, he blushes, looking at the boy beside him, both of them stretching outward, as if from the soil in which they were born. 2. Volvo Wagon In the backseat legs sticky on the leather seats in that protective shell of glass and steel his mother winds tight curves around lakes into the country as the three boys in the back-seat slide against each other one way, then the other, laughing at a song on the radio, the border-collie panting behind them. Alex holds the ball between his legs for camouflage blushing, looking out the window as theboy beside him, this blond kid who’s always talking, grabs the ball away & Alex might as well be naked now- the boy must know what he’s hiding & as the car drops him off and speeds away all he sees is the blond boy waving from the end of the drive leaving Alex to feel as always a spectator, someplace in the distance. H. Pup, 2014, 2015, revised. Many thanks to Anne Sexton.
