In the Flesh: Stag at Sharkey's, 1909
Form in motion, no. 1
As the oxblood face drips
fresh fear
into him, the man’s mind sinks
to the hardness of bone —
how it leans
into shape, softening
the certainty of the face,
the hardness in his line of sight —
sunken into the moss of cloth,
the hardness of the body
he let inside him in the steam-
dim showers of the gym,
where he had learned to brace
against a man mid-swing.
The artist has left us with bodies
straining past their will —
muscles caught
on the edge of drift.
In bed,
the ache to unmake
a man twists
two fists inside him.
This, he thinks as his right hook
arcs over the referee’s bulk
to lay a kiss of battered flesh
upon another’s hip.