At the Trenches

after Robin Coste Lewis

I was born at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

            I reach up to lick your shoes

off and creep my nose to the zipper

            sealing you

from whispers slipping out

            my mouth: My God.

The blessing I’d learned from my mother

             as my father leaves for deployment,

the first thing I ever heard them say

            simultaneously, together

the night before. And in between breaths

            I heard the hummingbird

sipping nectar from your palms,

            felt the brown skin become

flush with gold. Or there was that pufferfish

            expanding and sharp in my mouth.

You told me to spit it out. I swallowed

            you down and in a second you turned

from man to warrior, pumping, poisonous,

            just to seep for the sake of seeping.

You knocked me down and brought me up

            like a tall papaya tree swaying in a typhoon,

only to war me back to the bed. Laughter was 

            consumed by questions I had, Where

do you want me?

            You held me tenderly by my neck

like a cub in a lion’s jaws,
            on a wall, the desert filled with wetness,

I couldn’t confess that lie, those lies

            I made as a young boy,

but when you named me baby,

            I was all truth and good by virtue.

I imagined you thought we were drowning;

            so we moved air between us

as long as we could, sucking the life

            out of nowhere. From time to time,

I mocked

            up positions for us to take,

how being dived into from such height

            can trap the sound in the belly

and how only when the belly is satisfied

            can you form those words.

I told you you’d enjoy soy with coconut,

            the creamy, sweet taste deafened just

slightly, the flesh brown, golden in the sun,

            and a saltiness that quenches the tongue.

You tugged at my testicles. Demanded, more.

            I didn’t have enough time to explain

I couldn’t breathe. To say:

            I’m deprived. If you get any closer—.

You played with my names, boy, boy, boy,

            and flanked our enemies at the trenches.

originally appeared in Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry