Blackbirds filled the trees like insane
fruits, the evening air dense
& still; young men & women formed lines across
the playa & slowly promenaded, the elders
watching, silently;
in the distance the dark peak of Popocatepetl
Twenty years old & lost
in Cuernavaca, tired from a day’s search
for a ghost I didn’t find, a long
month alone in a strange country, I sat drinking
tequila from the bottle & Enriqué
sat down beside me
Our conversation
was awkward, there were so few words
we shared, but later we walked through
the market & Enriqué bought a postcard
of the volcano to give to me & I bought a cold
ear of corn & he ate half & then laughed
as I winced at the bitter taste
of lime & chili
& later still
in the Hotel American I stood
looking from the door of my room at the chickens &
parrots in the courtyard & Enrique came
up from behind & grasped my shoulders
& for the first
time I kissed another man, tasted his heavy
tongue in my mouth, felt
the down of his adolescent beard against
my lips
Enriqué’s dark hands held my chest
to the mattress as he rode my wanting cock & I cried
out & was gone inside of him. But then I
would not let him enter:
‘Mas grande,’
I protested & holding his cock in my hand
I began to stroke until the semen shot onto
my stomach & he fell beside me & we
slept
& in the morning, silently I dressed
& rode the first bus out of Cuernavaca. I
was sick & confused & when I came to the
border of Guatemala I took a new hotel &
for three days drank. One night I fucked
a prostitute & many more days passed
in idleness, drunk
Enriqué, six years
have passed as I write these words. I have slept
with many women, lived with some, loved
a few. But on many tired nights alone
at my desk, in dozens
of small rooms in the city of Toronto, the
poetasters & their students staring
over my shoulder, I have sat with memories
of that night & the poems have often been
for you
I ask only that they might stab
the dumb & sterile darkness hard
as your cock, sometimes splattering small pearls
here & there.