queer play Cawthra Park
thrashing, scurrying among rose bushes
missing thorns, oblivious to my guiding calls
suddenly sprinkler jets jut out into the path
I shout for him to run
to be careful in this
stream of prickly stems and unadulterated water spouts
austere columns invite a toddlers twisting in and out of unintended jungle gyms
memorials flanking one side of the children’s water park and
the community centre
he runs his smile wider than parental breadth
grins and thanks me for saving him from the deluge
like wild remembered smiles from those columns – the ghosted
names of friends who went too soon
playgrounds bookended
by a dearth of generational sway stolen from girls becoming women boys
becoming men, becoming women, becoming men - making way
for the hard won play of new queer youth and all they have
to say
grave
an effeminate old man walks by the site
where they laughed at large cysts
on the side of a bald mourners head
burying faces in Nana’s seal coat
tears mistaken for bereavement
when shame from childish laughter
at the unassuming comic matrix of skull and tumor-like ball
covered in breeze swept wisps of graying hair
causes them to cry away their wild childish smiles
the soft sleek touch of a dead animal’s fur on their cheeks
as they flank their grandmother’s comforting arms as she
mourns a dead sister
mistaking her grandsons’ masked glee for sadness
later they would lie, side by side in broken twin bunks
toppled by the raucous
love for the sinew of their nine year old flesh and bone battling
against each other
in soft little fist fights and tight wrestling arms
he taught you how to fold toilet paper in squares saving wasted tissue
for other movements –
gave you courage in the face of his own
masculinity
as it outgrew the lifelong femininity of your fey measured
gait - sweet lisp of
strolling in and out of family portraits meant for gendered
posterity
both boys among strong women managing men among post
war tears
and the hegemonic daze of re-established prowess in a
different coat
tiny rebels with
unclipped claws – unaware of the clichés
that bound them
to the signifying praxis – the lazy laughter of family
plots where dead relatives lay in
waiting
to tell the stories - too
afraid to share tales of other traps and snares
mingling among puzzled thoughts that mix with joy and sorrow
circling cavities containing liquid secretions – growth,
blister, vesicle, bleb
pelts collated - conger eel, cuttlefish, coral - pups
in raging juvenilia - hormones leaping - they stood by
graves to chuckle, weep, then lie
together aptly plying into adolescence – now he cries for
unknown pasts -
there beside that dugout
respite
from the playgrounds, rolls of tissue, you still long for
shadows
of his stylish manhood – him for your minced swagger - one
went out of fashion – flushed
through centuries of bodies laughed at through skin and bone
the sobbing lyric
limbs – limp and wan they warned them not to play with verse
but there they went – hopping skipping jumping into manhood
- graveside
having left themselves behind . . .
having left themselves behind . . .
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