Queer Folk

this was a one-quarry town

God made it that way

hovers over the face of the deep like a twinkled foreclosure

sometimes I swim there

sometimes I get high and see my face in the water

it doesn’t mean much

that was the year we were supposed to get a Walmart

some people say it still might happen

one time I did mushrooms with Jimmy

I saw some regular-sized cows

I was more sick than anything

in the parking lot whose frightened child is this

is a typical kind of question

one keeps

to themselves

I think my favorite summer

was when Mickey Mantle hit 54 home runs

that was when I was supposed to sign up for the army

but even that fell through

I think how I see things now

is maybe how my daddy used to

say his unenjoyment check just came in

when I go down to the water

where the fathers and their fathers used to work stone

the size of a mammoth’s skull

the dumb magic of a Cyclops

I feel the diving lesson that won’t take inside me

spitting the drowned Phoenician back up

even what’s left of the shallows refusing

I want to say something like I am my own ossuary

but people don’t know how to say

those types of things

no one to tell really that doesn’t already know