Jeff Oaks
Little What
In the darkness. What a sonnet. When muscle
grunts, gives, accepts, resists, suck on breath,
even aches. But is not broken. What is going up.
Not a wrong way. What is going in. What is darkness
but unseen. Where are those nerves? There. What
a sonnet. Like a bed with a penis. Growing harder.
Like a hallway after grief. A curse and a whisper,
an awe, out of which the wolf arose. On your lap.
Clicking behind, on the finally down the dark purple
each man sits on quietly, secretly. A hyacinth. That
strange boy dead, transformed into petals. My
God. What a sonnet, what a little song of nails.
Slap it. Wolf it down. Slip it in, sing on. The mouth
shivers and opens to be a moan, that moon.
Jeff Oaks is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, The Unknown Country and The Moon of Books. Most recently, his essay on Wonder Woman appeared in the anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them. He teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. Favorite flower: The Sunflower.