Type O Negative

boys

57 boys my lover points into the trash heap. there are four thick volumes jammed inside a wire crate cloth covered & hardbound. boys will be boys, gilded fonts wink under the sun. black & white images of 10 tykes in shorts & white socks bottoms up hanging over a bridge. a towheaded freckled monster pecks his twin not quite the mouth not quite the cheek. a gawky long-limbed pre-teen, hairless & naked hovers over a huge trampoline in mid-bounce his pale arms outstretched wings the air is radioactive teeming with gulls as papa lay dying i peek underneath his face, the gray skin hiding the hot springs of naga. the smell of boiling salted duck eggs & ancient mud. his white-skinned father sits on a cement benchscowling & spitting into the bubbling pool it is twilight & papa a boy short for his age calls me into himself & with his finger traces the shapes of my eyes, nose, & mouth on the water’s surface thickening with his father’s phlegm. now, i place a mask over his. my face as a child, airy meringue cheeks & cool skin, lips 58 pursed. a child’s mouth is always ready for kissing. then, my tío, a tall beautiful teen from the provinces bites & nibbles on my lips. tío calls me sweetmeats. mama dresses & powders me like a doll run around the house with my feet arched balancing on tippy toes like a squat chicken dashing about. i whiz by papa is disgusted mama amused & tío hopelessly in love with my ballerina sprint & protruding belly. there is a photograph of me & tío. my small body fitted between his legs. his hand inside my shirt. my head thrown back, laughing. had the communist guerillas not thought tío a traitor, he would be here now with me & papa in this hospital room. in silent vigil. then, when we got word that tío’s corpse was finally found mangled by vultures & hanging from a tree, Papa’s face smoothed over & set clay cooking from within. had he done as i told him, had that stubborn boy finished university papa throws his glass against the wall, a shard scratches past my cheek i turn to run but papa’s blow to my small back knocks me flat on my face. he stands over me, screaming, you are not a bird! you are a boy ! you 59 are the first son as i am the first son as my father & his! & then nothing. Just blue & dreams & tío calling sweetmeats. sweetmeats. when the nurse tells me it’s time, i stand up. joints stiff from a lifetime of watching papa die. my lips throb, the silence presses against me like flat heated stones the stink of sulfur suffocating. i’m told that had tío lived, he would’ve grown old to look like me. i hover over papa & lean in to kiss his lips. papa’s wet sputter, his phlegm thick in my throat. then papa becomes the small disinfected room widening into the empty los angeles summer streets. papa becomes whitening bone & concrete the tinkling of a paleta cart bell building & multiplying into a network of freeways. papa is the ocean bringing the separate parts of itself together again & i am a seabird no longer a boy, my arms, muscled brown wings hovering over the rage of saltwater thick with phlegm sinking continents. ...