Layaway

by Laurel K. Bastian

If you are looking to get me a present
for my next birthday, I would consider
a dark-browed, broad-backed, angel-shy
boy whose incisors, strong as cut day,
have not been worn down yet,
who's been too-good and too-smart
for two perfect decades and hasn't
pressed someone fast to the doorjamb
but wants to but doesn't think he should
but wants to when reading crass, displaced
Henry Miller, a boy one push away
from unleashing the unblinking
definitive of the body, who has been straining
at manner's breached gate, whose
new-lion mouth is just now tearing out.