Running a last errand, I float into the post office wearing purple socks
like a devil who carries his erections around in a bright red handbag.
In line, a man interrupts me to say, You need to put some bass in your voice,
as if we are not all tiptoeing on the light that brushes across the hedges
or loosening the string around the parcels that have hardened in our throats.
Yes, it takes practice and concentration to swallow with athleticism
the base of man—even the gutter, with eyes closed, sounds like a freshwater
spring—and let it ring through me like church bells down an emptied
street and mingle with the laughter of children sounding from a schoolyard
out of sight, ghosts of our innocence, a calcified brilliance in the body’s caves.
Tomorrow, I will let a man burrow inside me, and I will accept him gladly,
a pregnant happiness snaking through me like a deep-sea creature,
bioluminescent, miracle, the effeminate’s delight woven, finally,
into something warm. Someday, I will wake in a not-cold room,
but for now, I contract like a nervous bride counting her noble eggs,
gleaming white of a hope unseen, against the thunder of release.