Hypothermia
Every time you embrace a strange man
you pull your father close. Deep inside
a different past he hasn’t confessed
with a door slam what he thinks
of your coming out, doesn’t stand unmoved,
arms frozen while a scared rudderless teen
tries to squeeze away his bitterness.
They’re whoever from wherever yet full
of welcome, go overboard with their love,
seized with it as they tremble, eyes closed,
in lovely but lonely homes, hushed
as a ship’s hold, lying with them almost
an act of grace. You’re like a sailor
ordered to strip on an old wooden ship
who becomes a blanket for his colleague
fished from the sea. Jesus spoke of such a catch.
Wasn’t he promiscuous, showing up
stoop by stoop in the flesh, his moans
also gospel? They offer you a Coke,
chitchat while you dress, and it’s like leaving home,
like you throw yourself back to the waters
so you can again get saved,
immersed in the heat of the moment,
hanging on to their longing like rope.
***
J. Edgar Hoover
How circumspect he was, wanting you/
to host or park in back, interrogating you
while you stood exaggerated
by a peephole’s funhouse glass, the cozy street
all stillness except for the locks
whose bolt action sounded like desperadoes
about to arbitrate a Western.
Give a man a delirious belief and he’ll ride off
into a real desert. You knew nothing
about him and too much. It was like years
ago when Hoover would have changed
from a chemise to a navy suit and passed
your mail under a lamp, steamed it open
just to hold some tidbit over you
instead of holding you. You needn’t touch
a stove to feel warm. But if he’d turned
a light on all the times you tracked down
intimacy in a bar, a grimy sauna,
maybe he’d still have hoarded himself
then surrendered a crack, squinting
from a dim vestibule, an agent of his own
disloyal urge. Maybe he’d have loved you then
as you left redacted it with a rushed smile,
a nobody no one was after who whispered
like he was whispered about, afraid
of being found out, of never being found.
