Four Poems by Kevin Simmonds

French Quarter

for James Baldwin

Instead of art

I'll have one boy

from dusk.

One boy

who knows the relevance

of his body.

Almost no words

will pass between us

until we rinse the hours

from glad bodies

marooned not long enough

like the paradise we took.

****

Until the father

Until the father

stops insisting the son fuck

any woman

to cure perversion

the son will crave

every mound

of a Japanese man's body smooth

as baby's teeth,

believing that man's smile

almost the same

as the father's hand warm

on the son's neck

brushing something away.

****

Something Owed

The man across the street
would undo his trousers
and ask me to squeeze lotion
into his underpants.
He never touched me,
only himself.

Some days it's sudden.
Some days it comes on slow:
the unbuckling the scent of aloe and musk
fingers serenading
beneath herringbone trousers later,
momma telling me how nice it is
him taking to me so.

Among men
how many give a daily recital
such as this
somewhere in memory?

****

The Bodybuilder

Elated

by the pump:

pecs in stilettos

shimmy in the flex;

quads,

baroque viols;

navel-dripped

middle stones.

Turns out,

gay solider

gorged

with tears,

tired

of the speakeasy

self,

secret knock

and nod.

Just another man

gone ape

****

Kevin Simmonds is a writer and musician from New Orleans. His writing appears in Callaloo, FIELD, Massachusetts Review and Poetry, and in anthologies such as Gathering Ground and The Ringing Ear. He composed the music for “Wisteria: Twilight Songs for the Swamp Country,” a collaboration with writer Kwame Dawes. His poem, “Rent,” appears in TBLWTB.

To find out more about Kevin, check out his fly ass webpage here and at the Red Room.

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