I am a man now, too, not unlike my father
who ran about town recklessly unfolding
before people then came home
to us who waited for him. He came home
to us, that throttling man: the one who bounced
with me in the ocean then kissed the salt wet
in my hair, who held our mother down in anger
or in love above her all-the-while drifting call John,
John, who slung a stag's carcass across his shoulders
and strode out of a forest into a clearing where light
shone intermittently. This is what men do.
They touch and spread desire. They chime
with the violence of desire not during the feast
but later once the body has had time to cool.