3. May the field be ours for all of October, may the Junior girls know a mosquito’s lust. May the mosquitos fail; may I be that kind of impenetrable.

4. Spare me.

5. There is a cabin on a lake with a name I cannot pronounce. I know that is where the white girls take the white boys and learn how to be a boardroom or a family or just a carefree they interpret not at all carefree songs to be. This cabin is far Lord, it is far and I am not invited. This is the only heaven I can see. May I crack another boy’s skull and in his defeat, find a key.

6. I know, I know this is the only time I pray. I promise what you know I will never deliver. Give me this day, tomorrow I will moan your name in a valley of ice and we can compromise, call that praise.

7. A boy wraps another boy in his arms and throws him towards the Earth. We call this “Eating,” we are never full.

8. Mercy my knees, mercy my ankles, mercy my groin its little ravine west of want. Mercy what is already torn.

9. Forgive the fact that I will not forgive the invited intruder, forgive that I am willing to die for what I am only renting.

10. I do this as a means towards sin, you know that.

11. Spare me the purgatory of a sideline where I might have more to sacrifice but didn’t. Spare me the agony of being the goat that survived.

12. There’s no place on the field that the spiral of the chapel cannot be seen and yet, I have never seen it.

13. Grant me the strength to place fear in the space I used to be.

14. Grant me the acceptance of people who will never return my calls after this year.

15. Amen.

COVERAGE

And there      the boy’s eyes meet mine

and this is how I know we must be enemies

October        and the air is full of mouths

a veil of mosquitos       smashing their bodies

against the stadium lights       and what I know

of desire starts here     watching their thirst

guide them to what cannot be drunk

I am 17         below their little convenient heaven

soft enough to penetrate    to slake what needs I can

and I want to break the boy in front of me

in a way we could mistake for romance     if not for

the pads       the lights         all the eyes we cannot see

but know are there        a body has purpose

mine cannot be seen       the body I mean

///

I play left tackle

my chest absorbs a parade of hands

I am good at being touched

in the name of protection

this waltz I do to say what little country is mine

I am too small to play at this kind of war

but I do what I have to to even the odds

My body belongs nowhere       so I claim his